On a warm fall afternoon, Amber settles into a chair on her porch, her nine-week-old son nestled against her, nursing contentedly. Her nearly-two-year-old daughter circles with the curiosity only toddlers possess, fascinated by the camera, the notebook, the stranger who's entered her world. This is Amber on maternity leave, her fifth time around, though this baby came as a divine surprise after a tubal ligation. "God said yes," she says with a knowing smile, adjusting the baby in her arms.

The mountain air carries that particular quality of fall afternoon light, golden and soft. From here, you can see why someone would choose this life, why they'd leave the valley heat and convenience behind for something harder to define but impossible to deny.

Twelve years ago, Amber and her husband made a decision that would change everything. Friends who owned property in Idyllwild needed caretakers after the Mountain Fire threatened their land, and they asked if the young family might be interested in moving up from Hemet. Her husband, a self-described city boy who loved fast cars, called with an unexpected question: "Do you want to move up to Mom and Dad's property?" An affectionate name they gave their friends.

"I was like, are you okay with it?" Amber remembers, laughing at the memory. She'd spent half her life in small-town Northern California, so mountain living felt familiar, natural even. For her husband, it was a leap. "That was pretty much the rest of it." Twelve years later, they're still here, their family grown from three children to five, their roots driven deep into mountain soil.

Raising Mountain Kids

Her oldest daughter is at the University of Redlands now. The second is on a full-ride scholarship to Boston University—a girl who thought Doc Martens would suffice for her first Boston winter until Amber gently corrected her. "Baby, that's not going to work. You're going to need real snow boots." The third, a sophomore, excels in AP courses at Hemet High. And then there are these two who redefined what family meant for Amber and her husband.

"Out of the top ten students at Hemet High last year, seven were Idyllwild kids," she shares, and you can hear the pride layered with something deeper. Validation, maybe, that the choice they made twelve years ago was right. The small class sizes at Idyllwild School make the difference, she believes, but it's more than that. "Teachers who choose to live up here, they're just different. More intentional." There's something about people who actively choose mountain life, who opt for inconvenience and isolation in exchange for something less tangible but more essential.

The toddler makes another pass, and Amber's attention splits effortlessly between conversation and motherhood, that particular skill parents develop of being fully present in multiple dimensions at once. When her daughter protests something, Amber responds with the practiced ease of someone who's done this four times before: firm, loving, keeping the balance between boundaries and understanding.

The Work That Pays the Bills

Right now, Amber's on maternity leave from South Bay Cable, where she manufactures specialized coaxial cables for the Navy and Air Force. It's not glamorous work—running machines, troubleshooting when things go wrong, making sure the braiding is right on cables "as thick as this," she demonstrates with her hands. But it pays well, and that matters when you're raising five kids in a place where the prices at the grocery store make you raise an eyebrow.

More importantly, she's learned to leave work at work. "Home is here," she says, and there's weight to those words. "I don't need to bleed, sweat, and tears for my job because my family; that's what matters."

It's a lesson that came hard. Her love language is acts of service, that impulse to give and give until there's nothing left. In previous jobs, she gave everything, bent over backward, lost herself in the work. "I had to learn to keep it in check," she admits. "Otherwise you're giving, giving, giving, and then you're like, why do I feel so drained?" With these two babies, with better pay that lets her actually clock out and be present, she's found a different balance. It's not perfect—what is?—but it's hers.

The baby shifts in her arms, that post-nursing contentment settling over him. These moments, Amber seems to say without saying, these are what matter.

From Joke to Flock

The chickens started as a joke about egg prices. Three years ago, when bird flu sent costs skyrocketing and her husband was watching their friend's kid, they were going through cartons of eggs at an alarming rate. Amber made an offhand comment: "We're going to have to start investing in chickens." A couple months later, her husband asked casually, "So how many chicks am I bringing back up?" She laughs remembering it. "I was like, are you serious?"

Now they have twenty chickens, each with a name, and Amber loves them more than she expected. They started with four Rhode Island Reds from Tractor Supply, then their neighbor mentioned the hardware store in town had chicks and her husband couldn't resist. The toddler toddles around the yard and the hens squat in submission, letting her pet them. "Chicky, Mommy!" she announces proudly. They get about fifteen eggs a day, sell the extras to pay for feed, and keep the rest. "It's adorable," Amber says softly. "They all come running when you open the back door."

When Nature Reminded Them Who's Boss

The Valentine's Day Flood of 2019 remains one of those stories that defines what it means to live on this mountain. The rain came hard and relentless. "It literally flooded the entire hill," Amber recalls, her voice carrying the residual shock of it. Highway 243 lost 80 feet of road—just gone, disappeared into the mountainside. For hours, Idyllwild was completely cut off from the world below. 

For two years afterward, the 20-minute drive to Hemet became an hour-long odyssey through Anza. People who worked in Banning had to route through Palm Springs and back up. "I've seen memes of our road filtering through the internet," she laughs. "Like, 'That looks like 243,' and I'd go back and check—yeah, you guys are famous."

In July the previous year, the Cranston Fire had ravaged the hillsides.

It's the kind of story that could make you question the choice to live here. But Amber tells it with something closer to pride, or maybe acceptance. This is what you sign up for when you choose mountains over convenience.

The Trade-Offs Nobody Mentions

Her daughter has found something fascinating in the corner of the porch and Amber watches, making sure it's safe, before continuing. "There's so much to do up here, but also not a lot to do," she says, and the contradiction makes perfect sense. Hiking, yes. Nature, absolutely. But cheap, easy entertainment? Not so much. You can't just decide to go to the beach. Even cravings become expeditions: she and her husband once made a special trip down the mountain just for Taco Bell Mexican pizzas when they came back on the menu.

The lack of quick medical care weighs on her more now, with two small children. "That's probably one of the biggest drawbacks. If God forbid something happens that's life-threatening." The fire department is close, but a real emergency would mean a long, terrifying drive down the mountain. So they plan everything: appointments, grocery shopping, prescription pickups, all stacked into single trips. It's the rhythm of mountain life, this careful choreography of necessity.

Power outages come with surprising frequency; sometimes two or three times a week for months, especially after fire season. They've cooked Thanksgiving dinner on their woodstove more than once. No generator, just battery packs to keep laptops charged for Netflix. "It sucks, but you make do," she shrugs, and there's something almost defiant in that acceptance. Mountain life strips away the assumption that everything should be easy, that convenience is a right rather than a privilege.

Finding Community in Diversity

What emerges in its place is something harder to quantify. Community, maybe, though that word doesn't quite capture it. "If you disagree with someone, you can still be friends with them," Amber says, and she means it in a way that feels increasingly rare. Her debate team captain background serves her well here, in this small town where you can't avoid people who think differently than you do.

She tells the story of her friend who loves baseball. They connected over the game before discovering they were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Now they joke about it. "I've never been like, oh, you're a Democrat, I'm not going to talk to you. Just because you disagree with a person doesn't mean you can't be friends."

It's a philosophy that defines Idyllwild for her: a microcosm of larger cities, all the diversity compressed into a space so small you can't avoid it. "You have the same percentage, just on a much smaller scale." The difference is, you still have to live with each other. You still wave when you pass on the street. You still help pull cars out of snowdrifts, even if you don't know whose bumper sticker is on the back.

What the Mountain Gives Back

The baby has fallen asleep now, that complete surrender only infants achieve. Amber's voice drops instinctively, though she doesn't stop talking. There are gifts the mountain gives that aren't immediately obvious, she explains. Her oldest daughter used to suffer debilitating migraines in Hemet. The kind where she'd throw up, where nothing helped. Five or six months after they moved up, Amber suddenly realized: "Your head hasn't been hurting." The migraines just stopped. The altitude, maybe. The cleaner air. Something.

And there's this feeling she gets, driving back up the mountain after time in the valley. "When I come up the hill, I'm like, okay, we're good now." It's a physical sensation, an easing she can't quite explain but absolutely trusts.

The Legacy She's Building

When asked what she wants people to remember about her, Amber doesn't hesitate: "Just someone who cared about people. Someone you can call if you need something." She thinks they've achieved that, "people know to call the Rackleys when they need help".

And when newcomers arrive, shell-shocked by the lack of trash pickup or Uber, Amber welcomes them with practical wisdom: stock up on wood, plan for expensive propane, get everything you need by Friday and don't leave until Monday during snow. But she also tells them what makes it worth it: "You can hike and play during the day and enjoy wine and the arts at night."

The deeper truth, though, is simpler. When the wind blows through the pines, that sound she loved in the Northern California redwoods of her youth, Amber feels it in her bones. "We're so blessed to just be able to enjoy nature and the peace and quiet of it."

The baby stirs slightly, and the toddler has finally settled, momentarily entranced by something in the yard. The afternoon light shifts, deepening toward evening. Life continues at mountain pace: slower, more intentional, more connected to rhythms of weather and season and community.

Sitting here on her porch with her two youngest children, twelve years into this mountain life she never quite planned, Amber wouldn't have it any other way.