What if crowds don't have to spoil the view?

Somewhere just past Bear Lake, the realization hit me.

My brother wanted to go to Boulder, Colorado. To do the hikes we'd done as kids and eat at the restaurants our mother loved, in what I dubbed our "Farewell Ma Tour."

I let him pick the trails. He chose wisely, starting along the Boulder River behind our parents' old place — where we'd walk to cool off from the inevitable arguments.

"On your left!" the cyclists cried as they blasted by.

Next day, Mount Sanitas: think, a mile on a StairMaster. That afternoon, we took an easy five-mile savannah stroll around the Boulder Reservoir — mostly alone.

Sunday, another five miles across the grasslands around Eldorado Mountain. Sweeping vistas and black cattle — bovine public employees, basically doing weed maintenance for the city of Boulder.

For our final day, the idea was to go out with a bang at Rocky Mountain National Park.

Not so easy anymore. Just showing up and going in is very 2010. You can't do it. The park went to a timed entry system in 2020. All the morning slots were gone. But my brother used his apex predator computer skills to find a secondary cache of available slots for Bear Lake Road.

People must forget beauty. Because even though I'd been to Rocky Mountain National Park many times, the wonder of the place struck me afresh as we slipped in precisely at our 8 a.m. entry time.

The parking lot was full. We had to take the shuttle bus. Crowds are considered the bane of national parks. Everybody complains about them, constantly. Me too.

"Hell is other people," I said, quoting Sartre, as we threaded our way along the trail.

It is a vigorous 256-foot hike from the trailhead to Bear Lake. You can do it in a wheelchair. Parks are designed this way: Put the best views close to the parking lot. The trail was a continuous stream of humanity.

It began to dawn on me: Whether the others are a blight or a benefit depends not so much on them, as on me.

Other folks are usually viewed as an intrusion on precious solitude, a disturbance of the beauty of nature that you've come so far to see. It only takes a little spit to spoil the soup.

Or ... you could consider them part of that selfsame nature.

The moms bearing their children literally on their backs, like possums. The dads giving pep talks to their tired, balky offspring — I tossed them nods of solidarity. The families, sullen teens, their faces set in "I'm not enjoying this, you can't make me" defiance. The world in hiking boots: Indian college students, Mexican families, prim Japanese couples kitted out in their pricey Mont-Bell gear.

The arguments passed through like clouds of gnats.

"Don't swing your stick!" a father admonished a girl.

"And who gave her that stick?" my brother said to me after we were out of earshot. "She's 7 years old; she could run up this trail."

You can view other people as an intrusion — they spoil everything. Then the question becomes: Who doesn't belong? Oddly, those most bothered by crowds somehow never consider their own presence. Somehow, they always should be here. Why is that?

Because they adore themselves and regret and disdain the others. If only the interlopers would vanish. We see where that attitude leads.

When you puff the romantic mists away from the nature-in-solitude ideal, it smacks of colonialism — the great white hunter, hacking through the dense jungle where no European has stepped before. For millennia, locals have slipped soundlessly through the underbrush. But your arrival here is the opening gong of significance, starting the clock of history.

There is another way. You could accept the others, flaws and all. Could realize that your reaction says a lot more about you than it does about those you're reacting to.

If you smirk at the morbidly-obese trailmate, you confirm yourself as someone driven to lord yourself over strangers. Who needs to snicker at those facing more challenges than you. She's here, isn't she? Maybe you could cut her some slack. Find another way to feel good about yourself.

Could this be giddiness? The thrill of seeing Bear Lake, where I was greeted by the literal bluebird of happiness — OK, it was a Steller's Jay — winging above the waters.

You decide what to focus on. Ignore the crowds, soak in the nature. Or stare at the people and wince. Or take it in all together, the nature and the people, approvingly, as both aspects of the same glorious creation.

What if that were the national standard? View others kindly. Treat them well. We were never much good at that, and have gotten worse.