I came looking for Anne Shirley, but I couldn’t find her at Green Gables. Oh, they had paid careful attention to detail in that house: Bonny, the geranium, was in the kitchen window; the amethyst broach was in Marilla’s room; Anne’s much-coveted puffed sleeve dress hung in her room; and the broken slate, cracked emphatically over Gilbert’s head, was displayed nearby. It was all very accurate to the fiction of the story, but somehow, none of it looked quite as I had imagined it as a girl, and in successive readings since. Anne, as my own fellowship with the novel had painted her, was nowhere to be found.
So, I went outside and I wandered, following Lover’s Lane, that woodsy path of solitude that had been much-loved by Anne’s creator. The boughs, verdant and leafy, closed above me, and looking down the tunnel they shaped, I spied a shadowy form. Logic insisted it was just another tourist, but I held onto some strange hope that at last, I had spied Anne. I followed the path deeper into the trees, through lush ferns and wildflowers and over a tinkling brook, breathing deeply of the fresh stillness and landscapes that spoke of Anne. From there, I continued to the Haunted Wood, a prickly sensation crawling across my flesh as I relived Anne’s fright there in the novel. I was positive I could almost glimpse her among the shadows, around some bend in the road.
With one last, backwards glance at Green Gables, I left the National Park and made my way to Cavendish Beach. A breeze tousled my hair as I followed the marked trail along the dunes.
