Since my family and I moved to Vancouver Island, we have enjoyed discovering intriguing landscapes where colossal human-made structures have become almost like natural features. Oftentimes, 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 year-round, particularly in the autumn when fallen leaves carpet these venerable lines as slender boughs create a warm amber archway over the silent steel ribbons.
