From Lucy Maud Montgomery’s slim memoir The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1997), originally published as a series of essays in the Toronto magazine Everywoman’s World in 1917, and as a book in 1975:
“I have never drawn any of my book people from life. The exception was ‘Peg Bowen’ in The Story Girl. And even then I painted the lily very freely. I have used real places in my books and many real incidents. But hitherto I have depended wholly on the creative power of my own imagination for my characters.
Cavendish was ‘Avonlea’ to a certain extent. ‘Lover’s Lane’ was a very beautiful lane through the woods on a neighbour’s farm. It was a beloved haunt of mine from my earliest days. The ‘Shore Road’ has a real existence, between Cavendish and Rustico. But the ‘White Way of Delight,’ ‘Wiltonmere,’ and ‘Violet Vale’ were transplanted from the estates of my castles in Spain. ‘The Lake of Shining Waters’ is generally supposed to be Cavendish Pond. This is not so. The pond I had in mind is the one at Park Corner, below Uncle John Campbell’s house. But I suppose that a good many of the effects of light and shadow I had seen on the Cavendish Pond figured unconsciously in my descriptions. Anne’s habit of naming places was an old one of my own. I named all the pretty nooks and corners about the old farm. I had, I remember, a ‘Fairyland,’ a ‘Dreamland,’ a ‘Pussy-Willow Palace,’ a ‘No-Man’s Land,’ a ‘Queen’s Bower,’ and many others. The ‘Dryads Bubble’ was purely imaginary, the ‘Old Log Bridge’ was a real thing. It was formed by a single large tree that had blown down and lay across the brook. It had served as a bridge to the generation before my time, and was hollowed out like a shell by the tread of hundreds of passing feet. Earth had blown into the crevices, and ferns and grasses had found root and fringed it luxuriantly. Velvet moss covered its sides and below was a deep, clear, sun-flecked stream.”
Your Pages . . .
1. What settings from your own life have stayed with you in memory — happily or not — and have been, or could be, used in one of your short stories or memoirs?
2. Like Lucy Maud Montgomery, did you and your childhood friends have special names for places where you played and explored? If so, what were they?
3. Write a one-page, evocative description of a meaningful place from any time in your past (not necessarily childhood), OR a brief scene, real or imagined, set in one such location.
Please share your thoughts in the Comments below.
I wrote a piece as a result of your post. You show me how a good teacher, asking the right questions, can INSPIRE. Thanks again.