I’ve written before that sometimes I need to get out of Boston and rediscover that Massachusetts has lots of green green trees. Since last week was the end of my summer class, I took advantage of the long July 4th weekend to have a nice relaxing weekend out of the city. The town of Lenox is about 2.5 hours out of the city, and there’s a number of literary destinations to take in. The picture above is from Edith Wharton’s home, The Mount, which she designed, built, and of course lived in for about 10 years. My girlfriend and I took the ghost tour, which is a nighttime tour of the house where they tell you about all the arguments, fights, deaths, and supposed ghosts in certain rooms and areas of the house. It’s also why the picture is so dark. (There’s even a pet cemetery, because apparently the Whartons loved dogs but couldn’t keep them alive).

Another cool place to see is Herman Melville’s home, Arrowhead. This place didn’t seem to be as big of a destination as The Mount, but that only meant we basically got a private tour of the house. The highlight is definitely Melville’s study, where he wrote Moby Dick while admiring his view of Greylock, which our tour guide pointed out looks a lot like the top of a certain white whale from the original book cover. (They called Greylock a mountain, but where I’m from, that’s just a hill.)

Tags:   patrick · writers1 Comment