Dispatches from Yosemite: Alone with the bears and beauty

glacier-carved valleys of Yosemite National Park have been closed to public for nearly three months and a few dozen lucky kids have h it mostly to mselves.

Locked down amid cascing waterfalls and giant sequoias, kids and ir families have passed afterons hiking empty trails, rafting in river and walking with wildlife w thriving in near absence of humans.

Expect to re all about it in upcoming edition of Yosemite Valley School newspaper, product of one of America’s most historic and unique public schools.

only school inside 1,200-square-mile (3,100-square-kilometer) park has three classrooms for 35 students in K-8th gres — children of Yosemite’s essential staff who live in a residential area of park and are watching over it while it’s closed.

school shut its doors in mid-March like ors across America and class has been convening online.

But pandemic hasn’t stopped presses on school year’s last edition of “ Yosemite Eye,” a publication that has so charmed its community it boasts a circulation of 5,000, distributed by a local weekly newspaper.

young reporters take ir mission seriously: “To give outside world inside scoop on day-to-day life here,” as eighth grer Gabriela Reyes-Morris puts it.

ir school is tucked in a meow overlooking Yosemite Falls, tallest waterfall in America and a fine sight to see while playing kickball. Teacher Cathy DeCecco fondly calls it “Little House on Prairie — with Wi-Fi and robotics classes.” Yosemite Valley School dates to 1875 when it was a one-room schoolhouse.

playground and playing fields face towering waterfall, which offers a running soundtrack and shakes schoolhouse walls when it reaches full throttle in spring. re’s a massive old black oak tree outside that y sit under and re when wear is nice. y have ski days in winter and go tpoling in May.

Yosemite is usually teeming with visitors this time of year, and park has indicated it may partially reopen in June.

Until n, re is an abundance of material to report from a Yosemite so majestic in its emptiness it feels like an Ansel ams photograph come to life.

“Covid-19 is t affecting pretty flowers," said Pearl Johnson, 10. “And it’s t affecting all beautiful rivers. It’s actually affecting beautiful rivers in a good way because people aren’t polluting m."

bears, bobcats, coyotes and or animals are having a field day.

“re are definitely more stories to tell because all animals are out w,” said sixth grer Eva Peterson. “It’s so fun to be in park right w. re’s body here.”

Eva spotted a bear or day. “It was too close, so we ran toward it,” she said, without a hint of irony. “That’s what you have to do. You have to make ise and get big, so it runs away.” Jack, too, spotted a bear eating a deer in Cook’s Meow. At night, a mountain lion in trees is making a strange sound that park residents think could be a mating call, said Patsy Fulhorst-Kirtland, who teaches fifth through eighth gre and is Eye’s co-editor.

kids interview all kinds of Yosemite VIPs, some of whom are ir parents, such as Chief Ranger Kevin Killian and Judge Jeremy Peterson. y cover events in park and write about what makes ir school so special. It is indeed stuff of childhood dreams.

“ park is constant inspiration for all kids,” said Fulhorst-Kirtland, who started paper as an after-school club last year with a parent volunteer, Maria Victoria Espisa-Peterson.

newspaper has a big audience thanks to Mariposa Gazette, a local weekly newspaper outside park. Greg Little, Gazette’s editor and co-owner, publishes it as a quarterly insert in Gazette, which has a circulation of 4,000. Ar 500 copies are distributed in park. Fulhorst-Kirtland got a grant that paid for this year’s printing costs.

Little and his wife, Nicole, Gazette’s publisher, have given photography and writing workshops to kids, and are w getting scooped by m, Little says. last edition included an interview with Yosemite National Park’s new acting superintendent.

“y h only interview anyone has with Cicely Muldoon. I tried to get it, everyone has tried to get it. But y got exclusive,” Little said.

Reer response has been tremendous, Little said. In one letter to editor, Judith Ann Durr, 73, wrote to say that she h Alzheimer’s which me it hard to re. “But when I tried reing paper by Yosemite kids, I just couldn’t stop,” she wrote. “y get right to point and explain things clearly.”

Naturally, upcoming June edition will feature some stories on coronavirus, from children’s perspective.

Talleulah Barend, a fifth grer, is writing about how video games are helping people socialize. re is a story on making masks, and a word search featuring coronavirus keywords, like “Zoom." Gruating eighth grers who are leaving to attend a high school outside park usually get to give speeches. paper will publish those.

Reyes-Morris, one of two eighth grers, credits paper with helping her find her own voice.

“It gives you a sense of responsibility and for a small school like us,” she says, “it’s first time as kids that we’ve gotten to speak out to world.”