Alexis has lived in Idyllwild most of her life, worked almost every job in town, and is raising three children here alone. She is an instructional aide at the elementary school, a caregiver to both of her aging parents, a student finishing her AA and heading toward a bachelor's degree, and a single mother who has worked seven days a week just to stay afloat. She does all of this because her kids are here, their grandparents are here, their friends and their church are here. She cried when she talked about them. She called them happy tears.

She was eleven years old when her family moved up. Her parents had been divorced for nearly a decade — her dad, an avid mountain biker, had been coming up to Idyllwild every weekend for years, and they both saw it as a place to eventually land. To save money, they did something quietly creative: they rented a house together on Crescent, divided it into separate wings, and lived apart but under the same roof. Her dad commuted to LA and Big Bear for the last ten years of his career. Her mom didn't love the school Alexis was attending in Hemet. The mountain made sense.

She was the youngest of six children, the last one at home. The kids were nicer up here. The school was smaller and had a real theatrical program. She made friends she still has today.

She went to San Diego for college, then tried Los Angeles for a while, met her oldest son's father in Venice Beach, got pregnant, and thought: I don't want to raise a kid down here. So she came back. She has been here ever since.

Every Job in Town

She has worked at almost every shop in town. Both grocery stores. The gift shops, the candy store, the retail places. Himalayan Treasures. Lady of the Lake. She worked at Candy Cupboard for nine years on and off, including through her first two pregnancies. When she got a job at the elementary school as an instructional aide in 2013 — her son was eleven months old — she still had to take side jobs in the summers because school was out and the bills weren't. Spring break, Christmas, summer: the times when the school went quiet were the same times the town got busy, so she worked both. There were stretches when she worked seven days a week just to stay afloat.

"I don't make minimum wage," she says, "and I can't afford to live here."

She also ran a cleaning business for years, mostly servicing short-term vacation rentals. She watched what COVID did to the housing market in real time — people buying at peak prices, flipping to vacation rentals, pricing out the families who actually lived and worked here. The place she had been renting went into a trust and had to be sold. She has been searching for an affordable rental for six months and hasn't found one. She now lives with her dad in Garner Valley, on an acre of land, and commutes twenty minutes into town every morning with the three kids.

She is not bitter about it. She is tired.

"Without the support of family, community, church, and a steady job," she says, "you can't make it here." She pauses. "I don't know how other people do."

"They're My Whole Life"

She was talking about her kids when she started to tear up. It came on quickly, the way it does when someone gets asked about the thing that is most true. She tried to explain it and couldn't quite get there, so she just said it plainly: "They're my whole life. Everything I do is for them."

She has a thirteen-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a four-year-old. Her oldest son's father died. She separated from the father of her younger two, who now lives in Inglewood. She is raising all three alone. She described one recent evening: one friend giving her oldest a ride somewhere, another giving her two youngest a ride elsewhere, a Zoom class starting at six, and herself finishing her AA at College of the Desert. It takes a village to hold the whole thing together.

Her oldest is a straight-A student for five years running, a critical thinker who is passionate about theology and philosophy. He goes to the youth group at Calvary Church on Wednesdays and asks the kinds of questions that make his teachers stop and think. When she talks about him, something shifts in her face — the tiredness lifts for a moment and she is just a mother who cannot quite believe what she made. "He's really amazing," she says, and her voice catches. She gives it a second. Then she keeps going, because she always keeps going.

The eight-year-old has ADHD and a memory that surprises her. Two weeks ago, he led her and his brothers to a spring on the mountain that a friend had taken him to once. She wasn't sure he'd remember. He did. He walked them there without hesitation and, when they arrived, said nothing — just let the spring speak for itself.

The four-year-old has personified Lily Rock. He counts it among his friends — alongside a girl named Lily, a dog named Lily, and a cat named Lily. He greets the rock. He waves at it from the trail. She doesn't try to talk him out of it.

"We've created a life for ourselves here," she says. "It hasn't always been easy. But this is their home."

Her oldest will go to high school next year, and if she can't find housing in Idyllwild, she may have no choice but to move the whole family down the hill — probably to Hemet. The thought of uprooting all three kids, leaving the mountain they've grown up on, is not something she wants to think about too long.

She walked back into town earlier in the day and counted the hugs. Twenty, give or take. "I'm not complaining," she says. "It's great." And then, more quietly: "I don't have many hugs in my life."

That sentence sits there. She doesn't elaborate. She doesn't need to.

She goes home every night to a house that is full — three kids, her dad, a household she manages entirely alone — and somehow still quiet in the way that matters. No one to hand things off to. No one to say, I've got tonight. She has been through floods and fires and winters without enough wood to heat the house. She has driven a sick child off the mountain at two in the morning. She drives down to Cathedral City at least once a week to care for her mother, who has dementia, because she is the only sibling who lives nearby and when her aunt can't manage, there is no one else. She does the shopping for her dad. She manages all of it, and when someone asks who else is going to do it, she already knows the answer.

"Who else is going to do it?" she says.

The Community That Holds Her

What has kept her standing is the web of people and institutions that caught her when things got hard. The Help Center. The Mountain Community Mutual Aid. Scholarships she found through word of mouth. Other parents who give her kids rides when she can't. But the deepest roots, the ones that have held through the hardest stretches, run through the church.

She is LDS, and her church on Tollgate is the center of her family's life. She says it simply, without drama: school and church and family — that is their life. Her kids attend activities at the Bible Church, the Calvary Church in Mountain Center, wherever something good is happening for children. "I want them to know all the things," she says, "so they can make choices for themselves." Her oldest son goes to a youth group on Wednesday nights and comes home wanting to talk about theology and philosophy. She doesn't shut that down. She listens.

Faith, for her, is less about doctrine than about showing up. Cleaning the church building. Delivering food boxes through Mountain Mutual Aid. Making a meal for someone who just had a baby, taking someone's kids to practice when they can't make it. She brings her own kids along because that, she says, is how you teach them. You don't explain service. You do it and let them watch.

In December she joined a moms support group at the Idyllwild Community Church — single mothers, meeting every other week, a space where someone finally asks how she is doing and means it. They talk about finances, about their children, about their relationships with themselves and their exes and the particular exhaustion of doing it all without anyone to lean on. The church provides childcare so she can actually be present. They are planning a spa day in May. She is looking forward to it more than she can fully explain.

"Just knowing you're not alone," she says. "That others are going through it the same way."

The branch president of her church is someone she has known since she was a teenager. He has lived here for decades, runs a business in town, and when she has a decision to make and no one to think it through with, she goes to him. He is not just a spiritual figure. He is a community elder, a neighbor, someone who has watched this place change and stayed anyway. Being able to talk to him, she says, matters more than she expected it to.

She is not sure how people make it here without a web like this. She has compassion for the ones who try. She has seen the Facebook posts — someone announces they just moved up and they're looking for work — and she reads them with the particular ache of someone who knows exactly what is coming. "You can't live here off minimum wage," she says. "I don't make minimum wage and I can't live here." She has worked seven days a week. She has built a cleaning business, bartended, stocked shelves, done everything the town needed someone to do. She is still searching for a rental she can afford.

But she is still here. The web held.

Lily Rock and the Quiet

Her favorite sound in Idyllwild is the quiet. She knows that sounds strange. She works at a school all day — loud, full, nonstop — and comes home to three kids and a household she runs by herself. In Garner Valley, she can hear the cars hitting the rumble strip on the highway at three in the morning. Silence, real silence, is something she has to seek out.

She finds it on the trails. Just the other morning, before school, she took the four-year-old up to Humber Park and walked the Ernie Maxwell Trail for half an hour in the cold after rain. On Thanksgiving, all four of them hiked the trail together — the four-year-old complaining about his knees, asking for breaks, eventually being carried. He still talks about it. He is very proud of himself.

She has been hiking this mountain since she was a teenager, knows trails and springs and spots that people who arrived last year haven't found yet. But she is still finding new ones. The spring her eight-year-old led her to. The cowbell trails she takes the kids when she wants to be in a place that feels like it was made for them.

Fall is her favorite season. The colors, the cool air, the light in the afternoons. She likes lilacs in spring — her mom grew them, they came with a house bought from a woman everyone called the Lilac Lady who had imported them from all over the world. After rain, the smell of the dampness on the earth. And the quiet before snow, when the air gets that particular muted quality and you can hear, almost, what is about to happen before it does.

She could imagine leaving. She could imagine the practical math working out differently, a rental appearing somewhere, a better opportunity somewhere else. But when she thinks about it honestly, she can't quite get there. Her dad is here. Her kids' friends are here. Their church is here. Their mountain is here — Lily Rock included.

"I don't think I can trade what I have here," she says, "for somewhere else."