Fields roll past. Vibrant green rows of potato plants and blinding yellow canola crops. White churches, orange barns, dappled ponies, and grazing cattle. Quaint country communities. Hunter River, Hazel Grove, Pleasant Valley, Kensington. Some are little more than signs on the highway.

We park at the end of a red dirt road, take a path through the dunes, onto the beach. It’s as breathtaking as it was when I first saw it. Red sandstone cliffs rising high above the sand. Caves and crevices, carved by the Atlantic, shaped by wind. Swishing grasses and soaring gulls. I still can’t get over how massive it is. I knew PEI had beaches, but I hadn’t known they had beaches like this.

“We’ve never really committed to the full Lucy Maud Montgomery experience,” I say. “Maybe we should get Anne and Diana wigs. Straw hats. Raspberry cordial. Take a carriage ride in pinafores.”
“No fucking way. But I’ll allow a trip to Green Gables.”
“Really?” We went there during my first visit, but I would have gone back multiple times if Bridget hadn’t vetoed me. I keep my map of PEI in a glass-sided box on my desk at home. I’ve circled the places Bridget and I visited, keeping track of what I wanted to see next time. Anticipating the island was almost as sweet as being here.

It was a postcard-perfect fall day. The roads were lined with pumpkin stands and the yellow and orange leaves that still clung to their branches shone in striking contrast to the sky. Most tourists to Prince Edward Island visited in the summer. They roamed Green Gables Heritage House, stuffed themselves silly with lobster, wiggled their toes in the sand at Cavendish Beach, bought tickets to Anne of Green Gables—The Musical, golfed. But early October was so stunning, I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful time or place. The colors of the island always astounded me—how green the grass, the neon canola fields, the rich rust of the soil and sand, the purple streaks of lupines. But under the bright blue fall skies, everything seemed more vivid. It felt like after the clammer of the summer high season, the island began to flat-out brag.
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers,” Anne Shirley said, and now I knew why.

The three of us will visit Green Gables Heritage Place in Cavendish and have lunch at Blue Mussel Café in North Rustico. I’m ordering the beer and lime mussels and the seafood chowder poutine.