We haven't managed many family outings for cultural events, but we did take the kids this week only a cloudy-day trip to Green Gables House in the Prince Edward Island National Park. Green Gables is the destination most likely to be dutifully-checked-off-the-checklist by bus tour visitors to PEI, but it's still on our family's must-see list simply because our three-year-old adores Anne and Green Gables House and anything that suggests that the elaborate stories she holds in her imagination could have some place in the real world.

What's realest and best at Green Gables House is still what has always been most authentic there: the real "Lover's Lane" and the brook path now called the Balsam Hollow Trail. This was the cow path that L. M. Montgomery returned to and rhapsodized over and, famously, signed over to her heroine Anne of Green Gables as territory for her bountiful imagination.

The situation of her grandfathers' cousins' house may have inspired Montgomery's descriptions in Anne of Green Gables, but what really lured the author to the locale was the lane and brook behind the house.

The Balsam Hollow Trail ambles over a quiet and playful brook and boasts more diverse species from the Acadian Forest than many of the National Park trails that are preserved more for their natural than their cultural importance.

There's poignancy on this brief trail. Lover's Lane has aged in the hundred years since Anne was published. The brook has to be protected from golf balls from encroaching golf course. The birches that have seen so much are now girdled or etched with random initials of passersby. And Parks Canada does not seem to be ensuring succession planting that would ensure the health and biodiversity of the trail for the next 100 years. The woods look bedraggled and careworn in May and November.

But there is magic on the brook path that inspired our best-known writer. There are always trout in the pond most people walk past near the entry to the trail. It is August, and the many varieties of fern are still lush. The spotted touch-me-nots are blooming, their leaves glinting with water droplets that bely the plant's other name: jewelweed. The bunchberries are clustering red on the ground. The occasional rich blue bead of a lily still dangles enticingly. The smell of balsam fir drifts sweet across the water, and witches' broom in the spruces suggests enchantments.

There are more ghosts of inspiration on this trail than on the Haunted Wood trail. It is still worth a wander.

(Note: The trail has stairs and is not fully accessible to wheelchairs or strollers.)

Have you been to Orwell Corner Historic Village lately? If you haven't, put it on your list for the summer. Better yet, take advantage of these last few days before the "peak season" for tourism, and scoot out there while you will have the place almost to yourself to enjoy and explore.

Orwell Corner, a PEI Museum and Heritage site, has been our daughter's favourite place to visit since she could walk. It boasts a great agricultural museum full of old farm equipment and agricultural implements and artifacts (and somehow retaining the ghosts of smells of oats-and-molasses and cow manure and machine oil). But most important is the village outside the museum building: live and up-close farm animals on a working farm, gardens, a one-room school, a church, a general store/museum/farmhouse, a blacksmith shop, a shingle mill, ideal picnic spots, and more. A visit is entirely self-directed and laid-back: a perfect getaway from workaday busyness.

We were there today, a group of twelve including seven children four and under and five adults from here and from "away." Everyone had a wonderful time and got as much historical interpretation as they wanted: some wanted lots, others just wanted attention from the goats.

The extra-special highlight today included a staff member, Elizabeth Kyte, using her scheduled break time to play the old piano in the ceilidh hall, joyfully accompanying herself singing just-right Celtic traditional songs. She didn't mind at all when our rag-tag group of jumping toddlers and nursing infants roared in to listen. The staff person in the General Store was able to tell us about her own experiences walking to and from the very one-room school on the site. There is always something unexpectedly delightful happening at Orwell Corner.

The sheep, sometimes distant at the Corner, were ruminative today and a group of ewes and lambs enjoying a bit of shade near the barn watched the children with interest. The kids thought it was magic. Again.

We'll be back before the summer is over.

The local food movement has helped illuminate the value of eating local: fresh ingredients, nourishing food, small ecological footprints, good relationships with food producers.

I've always felt that poetry, like food, is most importantly local -- so it was worth going out on Saturday night to "eat local" at the poetry table at a May 8th poetry gala book launch and celebration at the Haviland Club in Charlottetown.

When I read poetry, I desire a splash of olive oil (those writers from anywhere whose words I can't do without), some imported spice (great writers of other languages), and even some staples that are only available from other growing regions (all poetry is "local" somewhere, if only in the precinct of the poet's imagination) or other seasons (that great and vast country of the past).

But I still am content for the main part of my meal, and the main part of my poetry consumption, to be the best of the local harvest.

For this reason, it was especially nice to be in on the secret surprise that awaited the audience at Saturday's poetry gala.

An already poem-packed evening was publicly announced -- a reading of recent work by Island Poet Laureate Hugh MacDonald; a celebration of critical essays on the munificent poetic work of the beneficent John Smith, in Canadian Notes and Queries (CNQ); a launch of David Helwig's The Sway of Otherwise; and a launch of Richard Lemm's Burning House.

In addition to the poets' readings, highlights included both high seriousness and high silliness, from an audience member's public fingerslapping of the editors of CNQ for cutting two contributions by women from a male-heavy critical edition, to a sing-along introduction of John Smith led by Brent MacLaine and Deirdre Kessler and sung to the tune of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," replied by John Smith's spontaneous rendition of his uncle's British music hall tune about a monkey.

And after all this, whispered only through grapevines, was the evening-capping extra feature -- a tribute to Laurie Brinklow, the publisher of The Acorn Press, who is selling the press and pursuing a doctoral degree in Tasmania and Newfoundland.

Laurie is the most local of literary producers, having filled a cornucopia with PEI books of poetry, stories, history, fiction, cookery, and other staples of literary cupboards.

The audience for poetry on PEI is always surprisingly large, and among the more than 60 participants in the gala launch were many authors and friends connected to Laurie and excited for the big "reveal" of the tribute at the end of evening.

No one gave away the evening's secret, and Laurie was surprised and moved by tributes from her writing groups, movingly compiled by Dianne Hicks Morrow, and by a tribute for the occasion offered by Hugh MacDonald. She gratefully and tearfully accepted gifts from colleagues in poetry and colleagues from her quotidian work at the University of Prince Edward Island. Coincidentally, everyone spoke of the "magic" Laurie has worked in writing and publishing.

And that is another link between local poetry and local food: what requires intensive hard work and the devotion of a whole lifetime (and promises financial jeopardy but uncertain income) still also requires an element of miracle, mystery, and surprise to bring its produce to fruition. Call it magic. Call it what you will. You can just taste it.