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An elevator on the way up just happened to be the direction I wanted to go. Twenty floors to the top, and the elevator stopped at least six times. Other passengers stepped across the threshold, and each time I glanced again toward the sign displaying the maximum capacity for this particular elevator car. I'm ashamed to admit it, but as passengers boarded, I weighed them in my mind and did the mental calculation. Upon reaching the top floor, the sum of my figures approached critical mass. My nerves tensed like the steel cables that ferried us to our destination. Neil Young would have said, Rust never squeaks.

By the time the doors opened at my floor, I'd been forced to the back of the car. I wanted to get out of there, but I had to wait. We all have to wait. It's not claustrophobia, not even fear of heights. I simply had seen how close we'd come to ignoring the signs around us and I could do nothing about it.

You probably guessed already, but I'm not just talking about elevators. How many people, for instance, can fit into Telluride on any given weekend? I steered clear of the place when Bob Dylan came to town in July and camped up La Plata Canyon, but not because I despise Dylan. The man's a lyrical genius and despite some of my friends' complaints about his singing voice, I'm convinced he's a national treasure - but not the kind whose face ought to be carved into a mountain. I just didn't want to go through the hassle of dealing with checkpoint Telluride.

Telluride's major-events protocol reminds me how efficiently we can place limits on human congestion if we really want to. When a small town's population triples over a single weekend, someone ought to be pushing the emergency button.

Telluride, on the day of a major concert or festival, erects barriers to block any access into town. If you approach and present your ticket, you are directed to a parking area. If you're just coming into town, completely unaware of the event, you are asked your business and given a temporary pass, one that allows you, say, an hour or two to get in and get out, unless of course you live there - then you can stay, if you can stand it. Dylan himself probably has a sense of it: "When the rooster crows at the break of dawn, look out your window and I'll be gone," except if you wait that long your vehicle will probably have been towed.

Like the elevator, and the town of Telluride, and countless other locations including our national parks, we are approaching critical mass, a time when all roads in and out of every location will be supervised, just like airport checkpoints, scrutinized by personnel to prevent the number of human beings intent on arriving from exceeding the natural balance.

Instead of building interstates, highway funds will be used to construct ring roads around towns where maximum capacity signs get posted at the city limits: "This community unsafe with more than 100,000 occupants. Please wait your turn." I doubt many streets are on the verge of crumbling or sidewalks caving in, but I am seriously worried as the earth approaches critical mass, with 6.6 billion people pressed to its surface, that nobody is paying attention.

Here in La Plata Canyon where I decided to camp on a Telluride concert weekend - 15 miles up a gravel forest service road ? the ex-town of LaPlata City is all that remains of an 1880s boomtown. Thousands of people crammed in here together, carving elevator shafts into the sides of these mountains, and this rut of a valley must have echoed back then with the sound of their industry. The town exceeded maximum capacity. Today, not much remains - a plaque with a few historic photographs of a hysteric era.

But as I look to the north, thousands of concert enthusiasts wait for Bob Dylan to begin playing his music in the Telluride Town Park. I didn't go but I'm not so far away, just on the other side of a mountain pass, standing in an open meadow where LaPlata City used to be - maybe a distance of 40 miles as the crow flies. Though Dylan and I are both from Minnesota, we've never met. At this altitude, however, we might as well be sharing the same elevator. And it has started to rain, buckets of rain. I can almost hear Dylan's gravely voice mixed in with the thunder.

David Feela is a teacher at Montezuma-Cortez High School. View his webpage at www.geocities.com/feelasophy.