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.
