EDITOR'S NOTE
So when I read Brand, now 88, had donated 40 acres to Rocky Mountain National Park, I called him up. It turns out in 1967, Brand purchased 160 acres of land leaning up against the national park. He paid $32,000 with the intention of building a family cabin. But being an astronaut literally launched him out of this world, and the land remained untouched. “In my younger days, I felt I got a lot from the park,” Brand tells me. “It’s a marvelous thing. It’s good for families and for kids and for people like me and my friends who just wanted to hike and climb mountains.” While in high school and college, Brand worked in Estes Park, the town sitting on the eastern edge of the national park. He started as…