The strange episode unfolded this summer on Williston Lake, a vast reservoir in northern British Columbia. In late July, boaters encountered what looked like an entire forest floating on the water: mature trees rising from a broad mass of vegetation, with birds and other wildlife apparently making the moving island their home.
There was just one problem. The island did not exist on maps or navigation charts. What followed was a peculiar sequence of appearances, disappearance and rediscovery that briefly turned an obscure patch of the reservoir into an international curiosity. Satellite imagery eventually confirmed that the island was real. But precisely how it formed, and how it managed to travel across the reservoir, remains less certain.
The floating forest that nobody expected
Williston Lake is not a natural lake. It is a massive reservoir created after the W.A.C. Bennett Dam flooded the region in 1968. Covering roughly 1,700 square kilometres, it is the largest body of freshwater in British Columbia, according to reporting by The Guardian .
That made the discovery especially striking. This was not an unknown wilderness pond where a drifting patch of vegetation might go unnoticed. The floating mass appeared in a huge, well-known reservoir where its presence immediately caught the attention of people on the water.
Rocky Avery, a local resident whose friend first encountered the island, told the CBC that he had never witnessed anything comparable during his decades in Canada. He later shared photographs and videos online, where they quickly attracted attention. Smithsonian Magazine reported that B.C. Hydro spokesperson Bob Gammer initially wondered whether the images might even have been generated by artificial intelligence.
Then came the proof. A satellite image from July 21 showed a green, forested mass approximately 150 yards long and 75 yards wide, an area approaching the size of two football fields.
Then the island disappeared
By early August, however, the island was no longer where people had seen it. Satellite imagery showed that it had disappeared from its original position. To anyone following the story, it seemed almost as though the floating forest had sunk, broken apart or simply vanished into the enormous reservoir. But the island had not necessarily gone anywhere permanent.
