Like many of those who have hiked, biked, surfed, and paddled for years, Dana Watts had gotten used to things a certain way. For instance, her daily dog walk on the Mount Sanitas trail on the edge of Boulder, Colorado, had steadily gotten busier over the years. But whether it was a weekday, weekend, or holiday, morning, noon, or night, when she walked out of town and into the Rocky Mountains she had a pretty good idea of how many people she’d see, what they’d be doing, and how’d they be acting.
Then came Covid. The onset of the pandemic and lockdowns in spring 2020 added a new cohort to parks, trails, and greenspaces all over the world, including Mount Sanitas.
“At first I thought, ‘This is pretty cool,’” Watts remembers. “There were all these new faces, all this diversity I’d never seen before. We need more people to connect with nature; it’s the only way they’re going to care.”
But as trailhead garbage cans spilled over, parking lots overflowed, and increasing
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