Since my family and I moved to Vancouver Island from our home on Salt Spring Island almost three years ago, we have enjoyed many leisurely day trips, oftentimes simply meandering along the scenic country roads in Cowichan Valley, where serene natural landscapes and verdant terrain await us amid farmland, vineyards, and rolling hills.
Here, on the southeast coast of the island — before the special atmospheric beauty of April returns with its sun-dappled days morphing into dramatic rain showers — my brother Michael and I like to head out just after dawn to catch the mist rolling silently through the trees and over the water, as well as around these manmade structures we have come to appreciate as part of the landscape, before it dissipates with the rising sun.
Michael and I are both fascinated by the Island Rail Corridor (aka “The Sleeping Spine”) — 289 km of now disused rail tracks built in 1871 — and its striking infrastructure, which includes trestles, bridges, and the tracks themselves in various states of decay.
And so, one morning in late March, we decided to revisit the Cowichan Station Flag Stop — a rustic, red-and-white 1950s wooden shelter that was a bustling hub and part of the island’s unique railway history — to capture the ghostly mist hovering over the now unused train tracks.
On our way, we couldn’t help but stop and marvel at the farm fields along the road, now blanketed in the soft mist. As I peered through a series of delicate screens formed by the bare trees, I could see the sawtooth silhouettes of the forested land in the distance, creating a dreamlike scene.
