Anyone who has spent any time at the Banff Centre (formerly for the Arts) knows it's tough to sit in a bowl of jagged mountains and get anything remotely creative done. The beauty makes your heart ache. There's also the aggressive pampering one suffers at the hands of the young housekeeper/snowboarders. I had to put the sign on my door knob just to keep them from pushing towels two and three times a day. The Banff Centre has aggressively luxurious towels. Thick and tightly woven, they not only dry you but seem to wick the natural emollients from your pores before your skin has a chance to secrete them. I'm a low-elevation, rainforest sort of girl, and the lack of moisture in the air up there made me fool around with the idea of using lip balm on my eyeballs.

Some of my friends have gone to the Banff Centre with ominous deadlines, their manuscripts sizzling their hands, only to spend their residencies hiking, hiding behind trees from elk, hitting on ballerinas, gargling martinis at the Banff Springs Hotel, etc. There's simply too much Planet Earth here. Too much gorgeous, life-type shit to do. Last time I visited I had to draw the curtains, turn on the computer, and pretend I was in Surrey.