Lynda MacGibbon

I have been on a pilgrimage. In the span of seven hours, crossing hundred kilometres and falling backwards nearly 100 years, I made my way to a sacred place where I could express my devotion.

And my gratitude. For once I had arrived, I knew I belonged there.

I have been reading Lucy Maud Montgomery since I was a kid. First the Anne books, then Emily, then The Story Girl. In my adult years, I read her four dense, dark and delightful journals. From time to time, I read the books again, revisiting Anne or Emily in some part of their lives. Or skim a section of the journals. Yesterday, at the Blue Heron book shop, I purchased a new copy of The Blue Castle. I’m curious what I’ll discover visiting it as an adult.

Last week, in preparation for my pilgrimage, I read the sections of LMM’s third journal that cover the Leaksdale years. And then I set out for that tiny village surrounded by fields and sky.

I stood outside the gate of the manse where Lucy Maud lived from 1911-26, wishing I could sit on the front step and drink raspberry cordiel with her. Then I walked up the road, her road, to the Leaksdale Presbyterian Church, went through the doors where she so often entered, and sat in a pew. Perhaps she’d sat in that very place.

I made my pilgrimage to watch a one-woman play, Maud of Leaksdale, peformed by Jennifer Carroll, an actress so talented I forgot she had her own life. She became Lucy Maud Montgomery for me, as she gave life to lines I’d read just days before in her journals.

Lucy Maud Montgomery was a woman with opinions. A minister’s wife in a prescripted and conscripted era, she couldn’t often voice those opinions outloud. So she wrote them, veiled in fiction, unmasked in her journals. She was a curious, furious woman, fueling her writing from wonder and worry, joy and sorrow, gloriously good days and truly awful ones.

Arriving at the end of my pilgrimage, sitting in that sacred little church, expressing my devotion to Lucy Maud Montgomery, I sensed I belonged, that I could rightfully take up a small space among the Race of Joseph who write, sometimes masked, sometimes not. But who write, nonetheless, because what else would we do with all that curiosity, wonder, fear and frustration? With all the gloriously good days and truly awful ones? We must write.