a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods

In addition to reading books, traveling to the places where they're set is amazing. We took a family trip to Prince Edward Island in June, and suddenly the Anne of Green Gables books make so! much! sense!

Green Gables is a real house in Cavendish, PEI - Lucy Maud Montgomery's cousins lived in it, and she based the book series on their home. It's now a provincial park area with tours, actors (only during July and August), and a hiking trail through the Haunted Wood. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to, and Montgomery's flowery, over the top language flowing from Anne is the only way to give it justice.

A huge cherry tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thickset with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple trees and one of cherry trees, also showered over the blossoms, and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.

The house is decorated as if it were from the book series. The signage through the rooms are labeled with scenes from the books, all the way to Anne's bedroom with a brown dress with puffed sleeves hanging in the closet. I for real about started to cry when I saw the dress - puffed sleeves! Anne wanted to skip breakfast and just feast her eyes on it ... me too!

Below the garden, a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally.

Over the brook and into the woods, to Grandmother's house we were going ... for real. Cousins lived on one side of the woods, Lucy Maud lived with her grandparents on the other side. The Haunted Wood is one of the most serene and idyllic places I've ever been in my life.

The trail has signs as you go with descriptions of the real Anne (how autobiographical was Anne Shirley for LMM, anyway?), as well as text blocks from the Anne series of books. And yes, everything was in both English and French. We were in Canada, after all!

My daughter and I took a break from serenity to be haunted in THE HAUNTED WOOD. 

The house where Montgomery lived with her grandparents is no longer standing, but you can see the foundation stones. There's also a marker where her school building was. Green Gables is the only original preserved building in Cavendish. And the cemetery where she's buried is at the edge of the woods as well. In another town, you can also visit Anne's Lake of Shining Waters and some other homes that her books were based on. They're all located along PEI's north shore. My personal schedule only allowed us to visit Cavendish.

The photos don't do PEI justice at all. The colors were deeper and more saturated than any I've ever seen - the ocean view is a deep navy blue, the cultivated green fields shimmered in the sunshine all the way down to the edge of the beach, where the rusty-red sand cut into the edge of the island and ran down to the water. Wildflowers carpeted the entire island - tiny and dainty yellow buttercups and massive, three-foot tall stalks of rich purple lupines.

If I ever get to go back to PEI, I will get a little cottage rental with white lacy curtains floating by the open window, looking out over the green hills to red sand to blue ocean, and just breathe. It's slow and quiet there.

I had always thought that Montgomery's descriptions of Prince Edward Island were over the top - Anne was SO melodramatic. But now that I've been there, I GET IT. It is REALLY like that.  God's in his heaven, all's right with the world.