It’s hard to stay invisible. The market abhors isolated zones that refuse to link into the great, tradable whole. What then will Kitsault become? New owner Krishnan Suthanthiran has a lot of ideas, but we discuss such a range of them that I leave our meeting with no certainty of what kind of visibility it will enjoy in two or even 10 years. He mentions tourism, a resort, kayaking, skiing, sport fishing and a wellness centre. “It simply boggled my mind that it wasn’t being used,” he tells me of this place with its “absolutely gorgeous, breathtaking scenery.” He knows he wants Kitsault to be full of life again, occupied and used. “A lively, vibrant community,” he envisions.

Seduced by the invisibility itself, perhaps? The wildness of the area is a complicated part of its appeal. With each passing day, the wilderness advances on the town. The saplings have not only taken the curling rink parking lot but entirely obliterated what used to be the school’s playground. When I fly out in the charter Beaver float plane, we bank a last corkscrew turn over Kitsault and I see it again, the trees pushing up between the houses, leaning down from the hills behind, threatening to overwhelm the structures entirely. “Things left alone out here get grown over,” the pilot, Karl, observes. “Trees up here are basically big weeds.”

And so, a tension surrounds Kitsault’s status at the moment. What is wild presses in each day to claim it, to keep the place invisible, while Suthanthiran has ushered in a countering force. It is one fully exerted by the grid of tradable places, which, for the first time since it was shut down, Kitsault has again been plugged into. In this grid, Kitsault is like any number of other remote places used for recreational experiences. And in the competitiveness of this grid, Kitsault must fight for survival, through pricing and profits, through the attraction of visitors and branding.

Who can say which side will ultimately win? Check back in five years. In the meantime, the final image I take away is from the Kitsault library, where the books are all still stacked and sorted. Where a book open on the librarian’s desk, painfully, turns out to be The Canadian Mines Register of Dormant and Defunct Companies (2nd Edition). Where the card catalogue may still be browsed, which allows me to report that the only Margaret Atwood in the Kitsault Library at the time of its closing was her 1979 novel, Life Before Man.

Downstairs, the pool – which Hank tops up regularly to keep water pressure on the tiles – is floating with a thousand dead spiders. The whirlpool is empty. Thinking of that card from the catalogue, I sense no others, finally. I am in the belly of a building that once teemed with people and I feel entirely alone.

And already beavering away in my mind, across the bands of untouched forest from here to Prince Rupert and on toward home, I wonder if I might someday find myself in a very busy place – Michigan Avenue, Madison Avenue, Oxford Street – spinning through a revolving door out to a sidewalk crammed with people, fully embedded in the grid, the hierarchy of tradable locations. And if, with a freak flash of sun and angled blue sky, I might suddenly get a ghosted image of this: nothing, nobody – the genuine rarity, the empty space. Would I crack my neck around looking for an invisibility that is no longer there? 

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Part three will appear in the December 2005 issue of enRoute. For the first article in the series, please visit www.enroutemag.com/e/may05/essay.html.