In this desert landscape, a scraggly group of spectators gathers around wooden picnic tables and plastic lawn furniture. A lone kid runs in circles around the group, desperately dragging a kite behind him. A few feet away, a ragged pink windsock dangles limply in the breeze. For miles around, the dry, scrubby hills of Horseshoe Bend Recreation Park, near the edge of Yosemite, seem abandoned — a vast wilderness of sagebrush and rattlesnakes, baking in the summer sun.
Free as a Bird Now (East Bay Express, June 21, 2006)
