On a clear day, you can stand next to on Mount Scopus in northeast Jerusalem and gaze all the way to the Jordan Mountains. The empty, rolling desert hills included in the view are some of the last undeveloped areas east of the city. To preserve these open spaces and attract tourists to the area, the City of Jerusalem wants to create a 185-acre national park.

National parks in East Jerusalem.

Mount Scopus.

In Jerusalem, however, a park is never just a park. The Slopes of Mount Scopus Park is yet another example of how anything can become complex and political in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Local Arab residents say the city is using environmentalism as an excuse to stop their expansion. If a national park is approved, no future development can take place. Residents of Issawiya and A Tur, the two neighborhoods that flank the Slopes of Mount Scopus, are furious.

“We’ll be choked into a small space,” said Darwish Darwish, the mukhtar, or community leader, of Issawiya. “They’re not trying to make a park, they want to stop the development of Issawiya.”

In 2006, the (JDA), a semi-public company associated with the city, began planning and developing five parks in the Kidron Valley that will connect Hebrew University to the Old City via a network of trails, picnic areas, playgrounds, and recreation areas. If all the parks are approved, the whole network will be approximately 750 acres, or 1.2 square miles. The size of the parks is small, but they will occupy some of the most contentious areas around the city. That means that every inch of the planned parks is controversial.

In terms of size, the Slopes of Mount Scopus is the most ambitious new park in the plan. JDA began the approval process for the park in November 2011. The national park distinction took community leaders by surprise, as the park has no endangered flora or fauna, no antiquities, and no archeological ruins in the area.

“The area is full of stones and thorns, there is nothing there that justifies a national park,” said left-wing activist and City Councilor Meir Margalit (Meretz), who is responsible for East Jerusalem. “The only reason this national park exists is to take lands and to keep these as a reservoir for future settlements…. They are taking land from two villages that need the land to expand and telling them the national park is more important than building houses for their children,” he said.

Unlike the West Bank, the Israeli government considers East Jerusalem part of sovereign Israel. All Israeli laws apply, though there are serious inequalities between the Arab and Jewish neighborhoods. Arab neighborhoods suffer from a severe lack of schools, poor infrastructure, poorly maintained roads, spotty mail service, and few playgrounds or community resources. Illegal building is rampant, due to the city’s policy of approving very few construction projects in East Jerusalem.

Since 1967, every inch of East Jerusalem has become a de facto battleground between ultra-nationalist Jews attempting to increase Jewish presence and Arab residents trying to maintain their residential spaces. This battle is fought on a house-by-house basis, with ideologically motivated Jews moving in clusters right in the middle of Arab neighborhoods. Arab residents view the planned parks as a variation of this invasion.

“The National Parks are like green settlements,” said Efrat Cohen-Bar, an architect at , a left-leaning organization trying to help the residents of Issawiya create a legal expansion plan. The designation as a national park, rather than a city park, is a meaningful difference, she explained. “It’s another way to make it nationally Israeli.”

But Elad Kandl, the director of the Old City projects at the Jerusalem Development Authority, believes creating national parks is the best way to preserve and protect the last open areas in East Jerusalem. The illegal building in the area threatens to destroy biblical tourism, he said, and the only way to stop illegal building is with the National Parks Authority, which has more power and money than the Jerusalem municipality. “We needed a government body that had teeth,” he said. He says the creation of the parks is not political, it is economic, and it is essential for preserving the area for tourism.

More than three million tourists visited Israel in 2011. Roughly 65 percent were Christian pilgrims who toured extensively in the future park system in the Kidron Valley, a place where olive tree terraces and undeveloped hillsides invite tourists to feel like they’re walking in Jesus’ footsteps. Though it is simple for the local communities to paint the entire park system as a political land grab, Jerusalem needs some of this area to stay pristine and undeveloped for tourism purposes.

Slopes of Mount Scopus has become a flashpoint. Left-wing Jewish activists and residents hold frequent protests at the site to condemn the plan. On a number of occasions, municipality bulldozers, accompanied by National Park officials, have destroyed illegal roads built without permits. The city claims the work is routine debris removal, but residents suspect that work on the national park has begun before the Interior Ministry’s final approval. In January, police arrested two teenagers for throwing stones at the bulldozers, and a number of activists have been detained for disrupting the work.

A possible compromise exists. If the Jerusalem Development Authority creates a municipal park, administrated by the city, rather than a national park administered by the state, it would preserve the area for tourism in the short term while leaving the option open for future development. Issawiya residents and the planning organization Bimkom have already created an alternative urban plan for a city park which allows the neighborhood to expand onto roughly a quarter of the space, along its edges, while still maintaining the visual panorama JDA seeks.

“A national park, it’s hard to change that in the future,” said Bimkom’s Cohen-Bar.

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930

Yards from the corrals to the finish, at the Plaza de Toros

2.5

Minutes the average run lasts

3,300

Pounds a bull can lift with its horns

2

People gored, on average, each day of the weeklong festival

14

Bull-related fatalities since 1924, when officials started keeping records

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���ϳԹ���: You called last year a karmic disaster.
KOERBER: I'd never trained harder or been more focused, but there were races where I was in 30^th instead of the top five. I couldn't even get out of my own way. But what was I supposed to do, throw my bike in the woods? In 2007, I tore my ACL and broke up with my boyfriend (we're now engaged), but it ended up being the best year of my career. Last year all I had to do was ride my way to the Olympics, but I froze.

How'd you manage to repair your ACL without surgery?
I would have run circles in the woods, chanting, if it meant avoiding surgery. I did Reiki, acupuncture, the VIBE machine, the Harmony Chip

Harmony Chip?
It's a rehabilitation patch that I put on right where the ACL was torn. Also, there was this thing called the ARPwave. It pulses at this perfect wavelength to loosen you up. I tried Biopulsar Reflexology also. I'm definitely a searcher.

You come from a family of athletes, right?
My whole family is pretty nuts. We all compete or race. My uncle Doug once drank an entire bottle of jalapeño sauce just to prove he could. He was sitting there frothing at the mouth, eyes burning, coughing. And we're like “Why'd you do that?” And he said, “At this moment, nothing else exists.” We totally got it.

Where should we look for you this summer?
I'm really focused on September's World Cup Championships, in Australia. The course is fitted to my style: fast, technical, powerful. You know, standing on a World Cup podium is the greatest feeling. I can't deny it. I'd like to repeat that experience.

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1880s

Bindle sticks, the classic hoe-and-bandanna carryalls, become popular with unemployed Civil War veterans who’ve taken to the rails in search of work

1947

Tent manufacturer De Martini Globe Canvas Co. makes shoulder bags for telephone workers

1983

East Village resident John Peters founds Manhattan Portage, the granddaddy of messenger-bag companies

1989

Timbuk2 releases its three-panel courier bag

1995

Capitalizing on the all-things-X marketing zeitgeist, PAC Designs invents the X-strap to stabilize large loads

2009

The messenger bag goes high-tech with Arc’teryx’s Mistral, an ergonomically designed bag with a new rolltop closure

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Nothing beats a great live show, especially when you’re enjoying it under the sun or the stars. Presenting the 15 best outdoor music festivals in North America. Because summer is the time to play the field.

Sasquatch!
Bonnaroo
The Roots Picnic
Telluride Bluegrass
Waterfront Blues
Rothbury
Forecastle
Vancouver Island
Grey Fox Bluegrass
Evolve
Lollapalooza
Mulberry Mountain Harvest
���ϳԹ��� Lands
Jazz Aspen Snowmass
Monolith

PLUS: Etiquette

Sasquatch!

George, Washington, May 23-25

Perched on a cliff on the Columbia River, 2.5 hours from Seattle and 4.5 from Portland, the Gorge Amphitheatre is Pollstar‘s perennial best outdoor venue. This year, the rock/alternative festival will also have a comedy tent, starring the People’s Republic of Komedy, that morphs into a dance party late at night for you and 25,000 friends.
Don’t Miss Jane’s Addiction, Doves, Fleet Foxes, the Decemberists, Blitzen Trapper, and Blind Pilot. $67 per day; .
Intermission Climb soaring basalt walls at Frenchman Coulee, outside Vantage ().
Crash As with all the festivals listed here—unless otherwise noted—your lodging should be a tent on the festival grounds. (Fees may apply.)
Also This Weekend Strawberry Music Festival, Yosemite, California.

The Roots Picnic

Philadelphia, June 6

The second annual Picnic is the hip-hop celebration of the summer, curated by the Roots in their hometown. The 6,000-strong block party at Penns Landing, on the Delaware River, is a rare chance to see these acts in the open air.
Don’t Miss TV on the Radio, Santi­gold, and what could be the musical event of the year: Public Enemy, with the Roots and the Antibalas Afro­beat Orchestra, performing 1988’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. $48; .
Intermission Take a 44-mile round-trip spin from the Schuylkill River Trail out to Valley Forge National Historic Park, where Washington and his troops spent the winter of 1778 (rentals, $30 per day; ).
Crash The art deco Loews Hotel, across from the bustling Reading Market, is a mile from the Festival Pier (doubles from $169; ).

Bonnaroo

Manchester, Tennessee, June 11-14

Yes, this seven-year-old, 80,000-spectator festival is a headbanging, sweaty mess, but it belongs on your “do once before I die” list. Thirteen stages’ worth of great music booms across rolling farmland 60 miles south of Nashville. Check out the Silent Disco, where a DJ pumps music into your headphones and hundreds of people dance in silence.
Don’t Miss Bruce Springsteen, the Beastie Boys, Andrew Bird, MGMT, the punky White Rabbits (whose new album was produced by Spoon’s Britt Daniel), and African-kora-playing Toumani Diabate’s set with Béla Fleck. Four days, $250; .
Intermission Bring your road bike and hook up with the wooded 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway for a ride among the salt licks of verdant central Tennessee ().

Telluride Bluegrass

Telluride, Colorado, June 18-21

What started as a small bluegrass fest 36 years ago has morphed into what may be the season’s best party, with a setting—an amphitheater planted beneath a cirque of fourteeners—that’s without equal. The vibe is no longer just bluegrass; it’s more like a rock concert in the mountains, with some 10,000 fans per day.
Don’t Miss The Punch Brothers; Three Girls and Their Buddy (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy Miller), and headliners David Byrne and Elvis Costello, whose backing country band includes fiddle virtuoso Stuart Duncan. Tip: The best shows often take place after hours, in the NightGrass series at bars like Fly Me to the Moon Saloon (from $15; ). Four days, $185; .
Intermission Take your mountain bike and ride Mill Creek, a six-mile singletrack loop just outside of town.

Waterfront Blues

Portland, Oregon, July 2-5

With more than 100,000 attendees, this benefit for the Oregon Food Bank is the largest blues fest west of the Mississippi. With 100-plus performances on four stages on the grassy banks of the Willamette River, it’s by far the best bang for your buck.

Don’t Miss Headliner Etta James, the R&B funkiness of Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and the Zydeco Swamp Romp stage, where you can booty-shake to Creole blues all day long. $10—plus two cans of food—per day; .

Intermission End your trip with a half-day Class IV rafting trip on the Middle White Salmon ($60; ).

Crash The swank Heathman Hotel, whose chef is James Beard winner Phillippe Boulot (doubles from $230; ).

Also This Weekend High Sierra Festival, Quincy, California.

Rothbury

Rothbury, Michigan, July 2-5

Three hours northwest of Detroit, the country’s greenest festival is powered by biofuels, features a Think Tank climate-change symposium, and is nestled in the woods near Lake Michigan. Of some 40,000 fans, 3,500 rise with the sun for early-morning yoga.
Don’t Miss Bob Dylan, the Dead, Brett Dennen, Cold War Kids, and—could you get more patriotic?—a possible July 4 appearance by Willie Nelson. Four days, $250; .
Intermission Catch smallmouth bass or trout on the Muskegon (two people, $350 per day; ).
Also This Weekend 80/35, Des Moines, Iowa.

Forecastle

Louisville, Kentucky, July 10-12