Resting place

The temperature has dropped and the wind makes it feel even colder. My husband and I are taking fewer excursions now as winter activites replace them. Books are a great diversion as we sit buy the fire, with a blanket and a cup of tea. In homage to our late autumn and coming winter bookish adventures, all of my posts this week are related to books.

A good book draws you into a world and time of the writer’s design. The most memorable writers do it repeatedly, like Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1874-1942. She captured the minds of many readers in her time and her books continue to do so today, as her stories of the precocious Anne Shirley of Green Gables transcend time.

The town where Lucy Maud grew up, Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, is visited by thousands of Anne lovers every year. We were witness to the admiration for Lucy Maud’s work this past summer when we visited Green Gables, the home of Lucy Maud’s cousins. This is Anne’s home in the novels.

There were Canadians from all across the country, and Americans from Alabama to Michigan and everywhere in between. Two busloads of Japanese tourists were there at that time. There were several couples speaking languages we did not recognize.

Over the years a few things have come to symbolize Anne, one of which is the straw hat and the red pigtails. Today, such a hat, with pigtails attached can be purchased around the island.

We saw several pigtail hats that day and one in an unexpected place. After touring Green Gables and walking through the Haunted Wood as described in her novels, we visited the nearby cemetery where Lucy Maud is buried.

Someone had left a miniature pigtail hat at her grave.

Seventy-five years after her death, a person from somewhere in the world left an Anne keepsake at Montgomery's grave. Could the fertile imagination of Anne Shirley even have imagined such a thing?