Stories

Julia

This vintage shop owner found her way to the forest after her mother's sudden death, guided by an extraordinary dream that convinced her there was more to existence than her atheist upbringing taught her. Four years into mountain life, she runs Mid Mod Mojo with her kitten Sofia, collecting treasures and "good people" while building community in a place where she finally feels at home among the trees. Her journey from corporate trainer to forest dweller fulfills a childhood longing, proving to her younger self that a life surrounded by nature, animals, and creativity was possible after all.

Bruce

Bruce is a former surfer, bartender, and chef who became the mountain's quiet chronicler of butterflies, wildflowers, and mosses. He rises at 3 a.m. for his spiritual practice, then disappears into the Idyllwild forest with his camera, where he's gone out over 3,000 times in the last thirteen years. He's taken over 250,000 photographs, counted 43,037 rare plants by hand, studied mosses under a microscope in winter, and written books he'll never publish, all while living on SNAP benefits in a life built from nothing but attention and love.

Mary Elizabeth

She spent twenty years studying community dynamics and organizing campaigns, then moved to Idyllwild, where theory met practice in the most intimate ways. In a mountain town that feels like walking through high school hallways, she's learned that commonality doesn't require agreement, discovered what collective care looks like when women showed up during her miscarriage storm, and found that even the birds at her feeder understand the social contracts she once only studied in books. Now she makes herbal teas, cooks soups when it drops below seventy, and has become the kind of neighbor she once only analyzed.

Gary

This 64-year-old tile setter in Idyllwild has spent four decades perfecting his craft while surviving devastating losses—two wives to death, spirals into alcoholism, and the foreclosure of his home. This year brought unexpected healing when he was hired to renovate the house he once shared with his second wife Jolinda, allowing him to finally complete the improvements he'd always dreamed of making. Through it all, he's found purpose in showing up daily to do meticulous work, serving on the Legion Honor Guard, and being part of a tight-knit mountain community that once replaced his stolen tools and taught him that it's "so much easier to be nice."

Nikki

A single mother fleeing heartbreak found unexpected refuge in Idyllwild five years ago and discovered a community that transforms strangers into family. Now a medical assistant at the Health Center, Nikki has been adopted by coworkers and patients alike, inspiring her to launch a program connecting isolated seniors with companionship during the harsh mountain winters. This self-described introvert paints holiday windows, crochets baby blankets, and checks in on the elderly, proving that giving back doesn't require grand gestures, just showing up for the people who showed up for her.

Wendy

Wendy arrived in Idyllwild forty years ago as a young bride in a temporary cabin, never imagining she'd stay. As a devoted stay-at-home mom, she wove herself into the mountain community through two decades of volunteering, coaching soccer, running the PTA, planting school gardens, and building playgrounds, always driven by a simple desire to make a difference in a place small enough to notice. Now, when she walks through town and people call her name, she receives the reward she treasures most: the recognition that she matters, that she exists, that her presence has become inseparable from what makes Idyllwild home. 

Derrick

This ornithologist dedicated his life to studying fairy-wrens in Peru and Australia before finding his permanent roost in Idyllwild two years ago. Now he shares his home with Kurt, Daniel, and Panchi, a rehabilitated American kestrel who lives between his office and living room. He practices the ancient art of falconry and has built community through hosting gay and lesbian potlucks, performing in local theater, and defending inclusivity on town Facebook groups. Like the migratory birds he's devoted his life to studying, Derrick understands that home isn't where you're born—it's where you choose to land, adapt, and settle in year after year. 

Sarah

She has lived many lives—each one teaching her something essential about belonging, about the tension between roots and restlessness, about the price we pay for staying and the cost of leaving. It's about a mother who collected autumn leaves like talismans against mortality, and a daughter who learned that the world is vast but home is singular. It's about the space between the person you were and the person you're becoming, and how sometimes that space can only be measured in miles and years and the accumulation of small, transformative moments.

Lynna

Lynna was born at the mountain's feet with Idyllwild already written in her blood—in her grandfather's firefighter boots, her father's Forest Service keys, the predawn fishing lines cast into Lake Hemet. At nineteen she found a grieving man in overalls across a gas station parking lot and loved the grumpy right out of him. Now at twenty-four with baby Wesson on her hip and Wildland magic in her hands, she walks through town at dusk when the lights come on but day hasn't left yet, breathing cedar after rain, trusting that this mountain keeps only those it chooses. 

Hector

He arrived in Idyllwild chasing dreams and love, only to lose both, the mountain stripping away everything but his essence. He learned that survival means loving what remains. Now Hector tends The Green Thing, a nursery built from seed money and second chances, where every plant is sacred and some are too holy to name. The mountain chewed him up and spit him out, leaving only this: a man who understands that the most fragile things need the most precarious perches, and that what grows from poverty and cold can still be beautiful. 

Mary

After a lifetime of movement (three marriages, five children, countless addresses across the globe) Mary has found her longest home among the towering pines of Idyllwild, where she's learned that humans aren't at the top of the pyramid. 

Through heartbreak and reinvention, she's traced a path that finally makes sense when the wind moves through the Jeffrey pines. Now, after more than eight years in the mountain town, she practices using her senses the way the forest teaches, understanding that the greatest gift is time. Time to become who you're meant to be among the trees. 

Jenn

She arrived in Idyllwild seventeen years ago to finish an album with her husband, but discovering she was pregnant two weeks later transformed their temporary creative escape into a permanent mountain life, one that evolved from music dreams into two thriving vintage and vinyl stores, Ephemera and Midnite Moon. 

Now approaching fifty, Jenn has discovered that true success isn't found in business achievements or social circles, but in the constant inner work of self-love. A truth she lives while tending her garden, training employees to eventually set her free, and listening each night to the mountain wind that whispers promises of change. 

Sam

Sam was born between borders—his parents crossing from Canada into Vermont so he could enter the world on American soil—and he's been straddling lines ever since, discovering Idyllwild at fifteen when the film program was wild and free, then returning seventeen years ago with Jenn to escape LA's intensity and build something new in the mountain's expansive quiet. He opened Ephemera and Midnite Moon, pushing the town's culture forward with curated vintage. After nearly two decades, the cycle feels complete, and the mountain that called him home twice might finally be giving him permission to leave with gratitude instead of regret. 

Amber

Twelve years ago, Amber and her husband traded valley heat for mountain air, raising five children, including a divine surprise after a tubal ligation, in a place where teachers choose intentionally and Idyllwild kids fill the top ten at Hemet High. Through floods that erased highways, power outages cooked on woodstoves, and the careful choreography of mountain life where even Taco Bell cravings become expeditions, she's learned to leave work at work and give everything to what matters: these moments on the porch, chickens named and loved, migraines that disappeared with altitude. 

Peter

There are people who belong to towns, and people who belong to the spaces between. Peter is the latter, a voice from the woods, a threshold guide who lives where the human world ends and the wild begins. Seven years ago, he arrived in Idyllwild and chose a boulder over a house, a forest over a community, the thin air of 6,000 feet over the oxygen-rich flats below. Now he teaches children to speak the language of Coffee Berry and Ponderosa Pine, knowing that being deeply connected to nature matters more than being deeply connected to people. Though he's learning, slowly, that maybe you can have both. 

Bronwyn

It took 80 years, three continents, and several men to bring her to Idyllwild, but it was the symphony of birds, returned to her through hearing aids two years ago, that made her stay. Now she sits beneath an enormous Jeffrey pine, her guardian angel, in a garden she has abandoned three times to fire, each evacuation teaching her the surprising lightness of letting go. What remains isn't the art or memories she walked away from, but something weightier: a community that refuses to scatter, that waters each other's gardens when the flames come close, that stays connected even when everything else turns to ash. 

Josh

In Idyllwild, he is known not just for keeping homes heated, but for the relationships he’s built along the way. What began as a job in propane delivery became a life rooted in trust, generosity, and the quiet rhythms of mountain living. Through every handshake, snow-shoveled walkway, and familiar driveway, he’s helped define what community really means. 

He approaches his work with the same care he gives to every connection. Over decades, Josh has turned routine deliveries into a web of 2,800 relationships, proving that in Idyllwild, business and community are inseparable. 

Saoirse

She counts time in winters, remembers the season she shoveled so much snow she told her husband they had to move, and understands why so many people leave. But her roots run too deep to pull up, even when the mountain tests her resolve. 

The memory arrives unbidden, simple and perfect. Saoirse steps onto her porch, just a few months into mountain life, and the scent of pine fills her lungs. "I felt like I was camping. I had this thought popping in my head like, 'I'm gonna have to go home soon.' And then I realized, 'oh, wait I am home'. I don't have to leave."