Michael and Kathleen Pitt will delight you as they share images and experiences in “The Land of Light – Canada’s Arctic Oasis”
by Leona Pollock
Did you ever dream of "just getting away from it all "- work, noise, deadlines, pressure? Perhaps you even did get away for a week or two to an oceanside spa or a mountain retreat. Michael and Kathleen Pitt got away from it all in an altogether different adventure. They flew to a one-room cabin north of the Arctic Circle to spend a winter. It took months of research, planning, and gathering up food and gear, but when they were dropped off in -40 degree weather , it was just the two of them, until a late spring breakup. They faced extreme cold and extreme isolation, but each new day brought a new appreciation of life, all creation and the stunning beauty around them.
Michael always loved nature from his earliest days growing up in Sacramento, California. He came to Canada in 1975 to become Professor of Grassland Ecology at the University of British Columbia. It was here that he met his wife, Kathleen, who worked at the university as an I.T. Administrator. They proved to be kindred spirits who after years of work in the city, living the city life style, could as a middle-aged couple not only endure the harshness of a Canadian winter so far north, but actually enjoy it.
For a person who had no experience with snow for the first twenty two years of his life, Michael now loves the snow and cold weather ,as does Kathleen. Their only regret about the past winter, was that it was too short!
Michael and Kathleen now live on 565 acres of aspen parkland near Preeceville, with their four dogs, at Meadow's Edge Bed and Breakfast.
"The beauty of its abundant flowers is one of the glories of the arctic tundra in summer" (E.C. Pielou). This floral magnificence in a natural landscape filled with caribou, muskox, and multitudes of breeding birds makes northern Canada a premier destination for all botanists, birders and natural historians. Fully illustrated with slides, this 55-minute presentation summarizes more than 10 years of the favorite images and memories collected by Kathleen Pitt and Michael Pitt as they canoed through some of Canada’s most remote regions. Thelon, Coppermine, Seal, Anderson, and Snowdrift -- majestic rivers that flow through a pristine landscape so vast that it still functions, as it has, since the great Laurentide Ice Sheet finally melted 6000 years ago.
Photos courtesy Michael and Kathleen Pitt
