banff

Date traveled: May 28, 2016

One of the first times I ever traveled for work was to Calgary. Over the past several years, since I started traveling, I’ve learned about the importance of opportunity when it comes to visiting: when you’re near places you’ve wanted to see, and it’ll only cost a little extra or a little more time to see them, it’s a good idea to make it happen. This trip was the first time where I took that realization and planned extra time to see a nearby spot.

So I extended my work trip to spend a day in Banff.

At the foot of the easier trails, it’s a bizarre feeling of being downtown but in nature: there are full families pushing past each other to hike, and there are lots of signs telling you what’s all around and where to go. On the longer trails, it’s more like I’d expect being on a hike, but because of all the busyness nearby it’s tough to feel like you’re in any sort of solitude.

We hiked something called the potholes trail, the top of which were natural holes with water in them. It’s prettier than it sounds, particularly because the fresh-looking colour of the water.

On the way up, we saw a waterfall, powerful enough to get you wet without getting too close. It was all the beautiful things you want in a hike – sunlight cutting through tall trees, moss, water.

Banff has a main strip, which is a lot of tourist shops stuffed in a few blocks. There were two beaver tail places on the same block somehow. Not too far away is the Banff Centre for the Arts, which looks like a small, state-of-the-art university campus. It’s the type of place I’d love to spend a month to work on stuff – have some late nights partying with the tourists, do some of the quieter hikes, write – but I’m sure I’d tire of it after awhile.

One of the most unique things I found was when in the main strip, the backdrop is giant snow-covered mountains in the spring. Normally when I’m somewhere with that hyper-capitalist feel I’m surrounded by concrete and smoke and glass buildings, but here it was nature.

On the way back from Banff, we made a quick stop in Lake Louise to take the famous photo of the lake between mountains that’s always every Canadian’s profile picture at some point. It actually worked out that we spent less than a half hour there, because all you really need is a few photos, to look around the panorama, then you’re pretty much done with it.

Banff and the surrounding area is one of those places where I can appreciate its beauty in an almost objective sense: I recognize it, I enjoy it, but I don’t necessarily connect with it. Part of it might be the negative associations I have with Alberta more generally (conservativism, oil fields), and some of it I think is the obvious encroachment of capitalism on the mountains and clean air.

I’d spend more time there to do more hiking, and hell I’d try skiing or snowboarding or those winter things that I most associate with it. But there’s not a lot nearby that I’m aching to see or do (I don’t like Calgary or Edmonton), so if I do go back it’d probably have to come from someone else organizing the trip or me getting a partial scholarship at the Banff Centre for some sort of project.