Since my family and I moved to Vancouver Island, we have enjoyed discovering intriguing landscapes where colossal human-made structures have often become almost like natural features, as native salal, swordfern, and thimbleberry blend them back into the forest.
One of the island’s most well-known engineered structures is the Island Rail Corridor (aka “The Sleeping Spine”) — 289 km of now disused rail tracks built in 1871 — which cuts through a diverse mix of coastal second-growth forests (fir, cedar, arbutus, and maple), as well as open rocky bluffs and rare Garry Oak ecosystems, brushing the understory as it stretches from Victoria up to Port Alberni.
The railway offers endless opportunities for photographers to capture striking images — towering, geometrical timber frames juxtaposed against trees dwarfed by monumental trestle bridges; the earthy rust colors of the tracks and their spikes creating a quiet patchwork with autumn leaves and weathered wooden ties; and evocative scenes when ghostly mist hovers over these forgotten veins or when a heavy snowfall leads to the fresh transformation of these venerable lines.
And even though winters here on the southeast coast of the island are usually mild and wet, a tranquil world blanketed in snow awaited us one morning in early February. And so, my photographer brother Michael and I drove up the highway to Yellow Point, a scenic, forested peninsula not far from our home where the farm fields had become concentric circles of gently formed mounds beneath the soft golden glow of the wintry light.
And after meandering along those quiet roads, we decided to photograph Haslam Creek tucked away in the forest further down the highway where obdurate tracks, hidden beneath softening snow, had become a smooth, ribbed path beside the empty lanes of the Trans-Canada, leading us into perfect stillness.
