Dispatches from Yosemite: Alone with the bears and beauty
The glacier-carved valleys of Yosemite National Park have been closed to the public for nearly three months and a few dozen lucky kids have had it mostly to themselves.
Locked down amid cascading waterfalls and giant sequoias, the kids and their families have passed afternoons hiking empty trails, rafting in the river and walking with wildlife now thriving in the near absence of humans.
Expect to read all about it in the upcoming edition of the Yosemite Valley School newspaper, the product of one of America’s most historic and unique public schools.
The only school inside the 1,200- square- mile (3,100-square-kilometer) park has three classrooms for 35 students in K-8th grades — the children of Yosemite’s essential staff who live in a residential area of the park and are watching over it while it’s closed.
The school shut its doors in mid-March like others across America and class has been convening online.
But the pandemic hasn’t stopped the presses on the school year’s last edition of “The Yosemite Eye,” a publication that has so charmed its community it boasts a circulation of 5,000, distributed by a local weekly newspaper.
The young reporters take their mission seriously: “To give the outside world the inside scoop on day-to-day life here,” as eighth grader Gabriela Reyes-Morris puts it.
Their school is tucked in a meadow overlooking Yosemite Falls, the tallest waterfall in America and a fine sight to see while playing kickball. Teacher Cathy DeCecco fondly calls it “Little House on the Prairie — with Wi-Fi and robotics classes.” The Yosemite Valley School dates to 1875 when it was a oneroom schoolhouse.
The playground and playing fields face the towering waterfall, which offers a running soundtrack and shakes the schoolhouse walls when it reaches full throttle in spring. There’s a massive old black oak tree outside that they sit under and read when the weather is nice. They have ski days in winter and go tadpoling in May.
Yosemite is usually teeming with visitors this time of year, and the park has indicated it may partially reopen in June.
Until then, there is an abundance of material to report from a Yosemite so majestic in its emptiness it feels like an Ansel Adams photograph come to life.
“Covid-19 is not affecting the pretty flowers,” said Pearl Johnson, 10. “And it’s not affecting all the beautiful rivers. It’s actually affecting the beautiful rivers in a good way because people aren’t polluting them.”
The bears, bobcats, coyotes and other animals are having a field day.
“There are definitely more stories to tell because all the animals are out now,” said sixth grader Eva Peterson. “It’s so fun to be in the park right now. There’s nobody here.”
Eva spotted a bear the other 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 noise and get big, so it runs away.” Jack, too, spotted a bear eating a deer in Cook’s Meadow. At night, a mountain lion in the trees is making a strange sound that park residents think could be a mating call, said Patsy Fulhorst-Kirtland, who teaches fifth through eighth grade and is the Eye’s co-editor.