Take Time and Travel Slowly

October 23, 2025 I By Katie Cox, Executive Director

Dear Friends,

I didn't know exactly what I would find venturing all the way across the continent, and I think what made it all so special is that I wasn’t expecting anything in particular. 

I decided once it was all over, that might just be the very best way to adventure: packing along not one expectation but open and ready for everything that comes your way. 

I was asked by a number of people why I chose Prince Edward Island. Partly, I wanted an active vacation and I happened to come across The Island Walk in my research. I think it was also the pull of a landscape so entirely different from my own that seemed a bit mystical. And finally, of course Anne with an E was pulling me across the country to her island. 

“This morning I went for a walk - all alone but not a lonely one. I am sometimes lonely in the house or when walking with uncongenial company but I have never known a moment’s loneliness in the woods and fields. I have rich, rare, good company there.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Walking it turns out offers a pace that truly allows you to melt into place. You don’t miss the birds taking flight from the shores of the estuary, or the small yellow lily in bloom along the pathway.  You find it is impossible not to fall into deep conversation with your walking companions. And you watch the transition of the landscape at a speed where it can make a lasting imprint in your memory.  I imagine this isn’t for everyone but I found I loved every step of the way.  

“I am thankful above all else for my love of nature and my capacity for finding fullness and joy in her companionship. I would rather lose everything else I possess than that.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1908

There is not a landscape that I love more than the one I get to live in every day.   On this trip, nature connected me to this place by the beauty of what was so vastly different than what I know.  From the red sandstone cliffs, to wind whipped dunes, farm fields freshly cut, hedge rows equally dividing, estuaries full of life and water moving through at every turn, this landscape felt entirely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.  I couldn’t take enough photos but also, the photos just couldn’t capture the beauty.  Nature is meant to be enjoyed in the now, in that place, with all the elements creating the moment.

“How we did love trees! I am grateful that my childhood was spent in a spot where there were many trees…”

Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Alpine Path, Chapter 3

I knew the stories of Anne of Green Gables intimately. Beyond reading the books, I also watched this program on repeat as a child. I connected with Anne, and thought her so bold, funny and irresistible. I wanted to see the place I felt I already knew, and read the story again to see if I would experience it differently as an adult.  

What I found was a deeper connection to the writings given my life experiences.  As a child I connected to Anne and her antics, but now in walking the paths, experiencing the ground of Green Gables, and seeing her island, I connected to how nature abounds in the writings of Montgomery. I found throughout her writings a weaving of nature’s influence and its impact on her and her characters. Her descriptions of experiences in the early 1900’s were equally alive for me as I walked her island over a century later.  Nature can connect us not only in place but through time, as long as we continue to preserve and protect what is the main character of our story. 

Travel slowly,

Katie