Earlier this week, Rocky Mountain National Park marked its 100th anniversary.

I enthusiastically joined the celebration, offering a special toast to Enos Mills, a fellow Kansas native who moved to Estes Park in 1885 at age 15, seeking a cure for tuberculosis. Like his mentor John Muir, Mills was a naturalist who campaigned vigorously for Congress to protect this spectacular wild space from miners, ranchers, loggers and trappers who threatened to ruin it.

Though only about half the size Mills envisioned, the park created by the stroke of President Woodrow Wilson’s pen on Jan. 26, 1915, succeeded in creating a haven for wildlife, including a reintroduced elk herd, a playground for adventurers drawn to its cliffs and trails, and a magnet for tourists content to cruise its roads and enjoy its rivers, meadows, foreboding peaks and wild animals.

A century later, they come by the millions each year to escape, if only for a week or two. Or in my case, every chance I get.

As far back as I can remember, Rocky Mountain National Park has been a part of my life.

As a boy growing up in Kansas, I looked forward to summers, when we’d load our camping gear into the family Plymouth Belvedere station wagon and head to Estes Park.

We’d stay in a campground at the Tiny Town Cottages along the Big Thompson River and spend two weeks fishing, riding horseback, hiking and exploring the deepest reaches of the 415-square-mile national park.

As I grew older, I kept going back. By then I’d blow past the crowds at Bear Lake and hike to Nymph, Dream and Emerald lakes. As tourists snaked in stop-and-go traffic at the sight of deer, I’d head up to Millner Pass and the Continental Divide and hike the Poudre River Trail. Or I’d wander the Kawuneeche Valley and the Never Summer Wilderness looking for moose.

I had fallen hard for Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes Park.

This was not a youthful crush. It was a full-blown love affair.

I’ve returned regularly with my wife, Cary, in every season to take advantage of everything this jewel has to offer.

There have been springtime visits to see wildflowers in bloom and the bighorn sheep scramble down steep, rocky cliffs to reach West Horseshoe Park to enjoy salt licks in the meadow grasses and frolic along Fall River.

Summer trips gave my kids a taste of my own experiences with my folks and three brothers all those years ago. In addition to park adventures, we enjoyed driving go-karts, swimming and hitting the shops and restaurants in Estes Park.

We’ve made many fall visits to view the quaking aspen and to watch the elk spar, herd their harems and throw back their huge antlers as they deliver their eerie bugle calls.

And many winter days, Cary and I have sat in cold silence in Moraine Park watching coyotes hunting in the snow.

Cary and I so love the park, we were married standing along the Big Thompson River in Moraine Park as fly fishermen tested the waters and elk grazed nearby. We renamed our spot Cary’s Meadow, and each time we return, we take new photos of our family.

My kids especially liked hiking to Fern and Alberta waterfalls, horseback riding and exploring the spectacular alluvial fan created by the Lawn Lake dam break in 1982.

They don’t particularly like driving up Fall River Road and down Trail Ridge Road. But I do, and make the trips every chance.

Cary and I have tested our hiking abilities on Longs Peak and made other less-strenuous treks. Early in our marriage, we explored with our son Ben in a baby backpack or in a hiking stroller as our other kids, Anna and Peter, wandered nearby.

Our family has walked around Sprague Lake in the snow, stood on the ice of the stream feeding it and stared bewildered at trout seemingly trapped below the ice.

I’ve stood on the porch of a cabin built by another great Kansan, famed Emporia newspaper editor William Allen White, who found solace in his mountain retreat overlooking Cary’s Meadow.

I’ve wondered what it was like a century ago, when cabins and hotels dotted the park and a golf course desecrated the meadow we so love.

I’ve imagined how spectacular it would be had Mills persuaded Congress to protect his original vision for the park, which would have taken in Mount Evans and more. The park ultimately created was just one-third of Mills’ original proposal.

And I’ve wondered what it will be like in another 100 years. Will Front Range development encroach so closely as to ruin the wilderness? Will global warming cause Tyndall Glacier to disappear? Will natural disasters wreak more havoc?

The best I can hope is that my children, grandchildren and their children will carry on my family love affair, embracing and protecting it as Mills did. And maybe one of them will be around to find out.

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