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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.

The kids interview all kinds of Yosemite VIPs,

some of whom are their parents, such as Chief

Ranger Kevin Killian and Judge Jeremy Peterson.

They cover events in the park and write about

what makes their school so special. It is indeed

the stuff of childhood dreams.

“The park is the constant inspiration for all

the kids,” said Fulhorst-Kirtland, who started

the paper as an after-school club last year

with a parent volunteer, Maria Victoria

Espinosa-Peterson.

The newspaper has a big audience thanks to

the Mariposa Gazette, a local weekly newspaper

outside the park. Greg Little, the Gazette’s editor

and co-owner, publishes it as a quarterly insert

in the Gazette, which has a circulation of 4,000.

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