It's all Lawren Harris' fault.

Above my desk at work is a copy of “ Pic Island ”. It, like the other Lake Superior paintings, keeps reminding me how much I love the north shore of Superior and that I keep needing to go back. Because Harris so perfectly captures how that landscape makes me feel, I started looking at his other paintings.

And the ones that grabbed me? The High Arctic ones. In 1930, Harris had a chance to hop on a supply ship and see parts of Greenland and the Canadian High Arctic. And then, 70 or so years later, I started scheming as to how I could get up there on a normal person's budget. It was pretty obvious to me that I'd have to either give up all my hobbies for a while, or get involved in a research project which would get me up there. I chose the latter. And this past month, I had my Baffin Island adventure.

The trip began with a visit to Iqaluit. We spent a couple of days there, and after a quick visit to Sylvia Grinnell Territorial Park , I needed to own a tundra plants guide. How else could I know that one purple plant is Lapland rosebay, the other purple mountain saxifrage? How could I live without knowing about cinquefoil and mountain avens and wooly lousewort?

Iqaluit has a definite frontier town feel – it's lively, there is construction happening just about everywhere, and there's a sense of people going on to points much further north from here. People like me! Because soon after arriving, I climbed back onto one of those FirstAir jets and flew to Nanisivik via Resolute. Resolute is the furthest north I've ever been, so, just to prove I was there, I mailed some postcards (they took a month to get here!).