Here on the southeast coast of Vancouver Island, with its Mediterranean-like climate, winters are usually mild and wet, but on occasion we do get some snow that lasts for more than a few hours. This past February, we were lucky enough to get a light dusting, which transformed the mostly deciduous forests, with their bare limbs, into soft, feathery landscapes.
So my brother, Michael, and I decided to head out early one morning to drive a few km up the road to see, first of all, if one of the herds of Roosevelt elk was grazing in the farm fields and to photograph the beauty of the wintry landscapes.
On our way, we stopped at one of the crossings for the Island Rail Corridor (aka “The Sleeping Spine”)—289 km of now disused rail tracks built in 1871. These tracks have become a familiar and welcome part of the landscape around us, lined with tall, slim trees, creeping vines, and overgrown shrubs. And oftentimes, we’ll stop to photograph the rustic infrastructure of the corridor, which includes trestles, bridges, and the tracks themselves in various states of decay.
But on that mid-February morning, I wanted to capture the magic of that lacy forest arching over the blanketed tracks like rows of snow-dusted fans.
