Idyllwild chews you up and spits you out, leaving only what's essential. This is what Hector says about the mountain that took him from nuclear engineering dreams to frozen truck beds to finally, improbably, a garden. The Green Thing, an outdoor nursery,  grows at the edge of everything: between homelessness and home, between the sacred and the sold, between the person he was and the man the altitude revealed. 

The white sage sits in the front of The Green Thing like a small miracle, its silver-green leaves catching afternoon light. Hector won't tell you its name, if it even has one. Some things, he believes, are too sacred to name. They arrive in this world with their own identity, older and wiser than the words we might give them.

But Greg? Greg was different. "Greg was an asshole."

"He was a Mojave sage," Hector explains, his hands moving as he talks, still searching for the phantom plant. "The most fragrant of all the sages. But so fragile, so particular. He'd move all his branches toward the sun, repositioning himself constantly. I finally found the one spot he liked—on top of a wall, on the most rickety brick you can imagine."

Greg is gone now, sold by a helper when Hector wasn't watching. Somewhere in Idyllwild, Greg lives on, hopefully thriving in soil mixed with the same care Hector gave him: special amendments, root mulch, stones for drainage, natural fertilizer. "A Gucci puppy of a plant."

This is how Hector loves: completely, attentively, with the whole architecture of his heart.

The Long Road to Altitude

The path to this mountain nursery winds through territories most people only glimpse in passing: homelessness, heartbreak, the peculiar solitude of living in your truck through winter at 5,000 feet. Hector's story doesn't follow the expected trajectory of a plant shop owner.

Born in Torrance, raised across Southern California—Carson, Escondido, Santa Marcos, Lake Elsinore—Hector arrived at college the first time with grand ambitions. Chemical nuclear engineering. He wanted to work in a nuclear plant, drawn to the precision and power of splitting atoms. At MiraCosta College, he studied his generals, taught himself clarinet, and lived in his uncle's converted garage in Carlsbad, an illegal little hideout where he drank Blue Mountain coffee and Jack Daniels, smoking abandoned cigars and writing through the night.

"I was so committed to writing," he remembers. "The coffee and whiskey kept me awake. I wanted to be a writer, an engineer, everything at once."

When his uncle lost that place, Hector lost his tether. At eighteen, with nowhere to go, he became homeless for the first time. The wound of that abandonment still sits close to the surface.

"Looking back now, at thirty, I think about how my family could have helped. They were doing well. They had extra rooms. There was no reason for me to be homeless." He pauses, recalibrating. "It makes me more aware now of people in need. I'd never let a relative go through that."

Building and Rebuilding

What followed was a patchwork of survival: house painting for five dollars an hour in Wildomar, landscaping that briefly paid well, graveyard shifts at a UPS sweatshop, three brutal years at Amazon where he learned to hack the system just to make quota.

"Amazon was probably the most brutal work I've ever done," Hector says. "Long hours, fast pace, older workers sabotaging younger ones. On the third year, they switched me to pick—basically a death sentence if you're not trained for it. I got blisters, bleeding feet. One day I sat down in an aisle, and across from me was a Bob Dylan album. Masters of War. I'd listened to his entire discography when I first started college, had no internet, just Bob Dylan and Minecraft. Sitting there, bleeding, I thought: What the fuck am I doing? Helping Jeff Bezos make more money?"

He went back to college, Mt. San Jacinto this time, studying computer networking and security. But Hector had also discovered philosophy, carrying a 55-volume collection gifted by a neighbor when he was in middle school. He became a student senator, the Senator of Institutional Effectiveness, reviewing policies and constitutions. He had a vision: get students paid to attend, solving the retention crisis for African-American and Latino males who couldn't afford to make education their primary focus.

"A lot of them had to work, help their families, feed their kids. Going to college was secondary. But if they could get paid to go to school, if being a student was their job, I figured it would help retention rates."

Then COVID arrived. Labs couldn't be completed. The CCNA (an entry-level IT credential from Cisco Systems) testing cycle passed him by. 

The Painter's Workshop and Lost Love

During those COVID months, Hector built something beautiful. In the backyard of his Wildomar house, he'd constructed a painter's workshop with different stations: washing basins, brushes, easels. Friends would come over to paint. He'd cook elaborate meals from a Cordon Bleu cookbook, testing each chapter's techniques at dinner parties for a dozen people.

There was a girl he'd met in college—Mads. She kept showing up to paint, already working by the time Hector woke. He'd make her shakes, boba, smoothies. She became his assistant chef. They got good at complicated dishes together, real ramen from scratch, intricate sauces.

"One night at a speakeasy in Temecula, after drinking until three in the morning, my friend Warren and I had a sword fight in the front yard—his épée against my broomstick. We both came back bleeding. After that, Mads started kissing me. We became a thing."

But when they moved to Idyllwild together in 2021—Hector had booked a songwriter's retreat and was chasing a promised salary teaching Native philosophy, Mads following the dream—reality hit hard. A terrible apartment in Pine Cove, walls too thin, a harsh underbid on a house painting job, no refrigerator, just a cooler.

"I felt so guilty," Hector says quietly. "Like I'd brought her into this situation that wasn't fair. She'd always been middle class. I've been in poverty, homeless, I'm comfortable with it. It's familiar. But putting that on her felt fucked up. It was my fault."

She left after four months, breaking up with him on his birthday. Left him with the lease, $1,100 plus utilities for 300 usable square feet.

The Architecture of Cold

Hector prepared methodically for homelessness the second time. His Ford Ranger became a mobile home: cooking equipment, clothes area, work bins, sleeping system. Everything had its place in the organized chaos. A modified 1970s hibachi grill, stripped of plastic parts, converted to propane. A toolbox in the truck bed for extra gear.

He learned the economics of survival. Pork over beef—"Pork is always high quality, regardless of the cut. There's no grading system. A cheap cut of pork beats a cheap cut of beef every time." Rice, tortillas, sardines that could be thrown into the pot while the rice finished. The truck became kitchen, bedroom, office, moving each night to avoid notice, always awake before everyone else, never sleeping until the town settled.

Winter was the hardest. No heated blankets, just a brown Woolrich coat and leather hat that held warmth. Just body warmth and wool against the mountain's indifference. "The cold sinks in through the windows," Hector explains. "I could keep the top of myself warm, my torso, maybe down to my hips. But the rest of me was just numb cold through the night. Sometimes I'd get so frustrated I'd drive down to Hemet or Riverside just to sleep somewhere warmer."

For two years, no one knew. He'd park discreetly, move locations, stay invisible. Friends like Jay would occasionally let him crash on a couch, feel warm food in his stomach. The third year, he found a semi-permanent spot, still moving his truck to hide the arrangement.

"I would work twelve to fourteen hour days doing cable installation for Spectrum, climbing telephone poles in San Bernardino and Hemet," he says. "Honestly, I think I was doing it partly out of a death wish. But also, it was the only job that occupied my mind enough that I wasn't crying or feeling sad about my breakup with Mads." Too tired to be sad. Mind too occupied.

What the Mountain Reveals

Idyllwild has a way of showing you who you are. Hector compares it to Made in Abyss, an anime where an ancient chasm reveals truth and horror in equal measure. "This place chews you up and spits you out. Whatever comes out is who you really are. It shows you your character, whether you're an alcoholic, a pothead, an asshole, whatever. Your inside becomes your outside. There's no hiding it."

Hector found his footing through music, busking in the circle, in front of Wooly's, clarinet and guitar alternating as his fingers tired. He'd make thirty dollars a day, just enough for rent. Later, dishwashing supplemented the income.

"I never really broke into the local music scene," he admits. "I put together this supergroup once—myself, the successor to Marshall Hawkins, Paul Carman's star student on alto sax, and this killer drummer. I couldn't book a single gig. The jazz circuit here is the same ten bands rotating. I've played festivals in Bulgaria, weddings in India. I'm more appreciated there than here."

But he kept playing. The clarinet from 1971, older than him, carried by other musicians before arriving in his hands. "I don't have a name for it. It's been played by others before me. It's its own person."

The songwriter's retreats became his real education. International musicians, people far better than him, teaching and collaborating. "I felt like the little kid at first. But I learned I'm really good at songwriting. I suck at technique, but I can write lyrics and choruses quickly."

Music sustained him. Philosophy sustained him, particularly Native philosophy. Plants sustained him.

The Green Thing

When his friend Ariel offered him the failing outdoor nursery The Green Thing last March, Hector was about to leave Idyllwild. He was tired of not making money, tired of the cold, tired of the mountain's demands. He would have packed up and disappeared without telling anyone.

But the nursery changed everything.

"I didn't tell anyone at first," he says. "The place was in bad shape. People were trying to partner with me, take it over, interrupt the work. I kept it quiet, sneaking around, setting it up. I worked with the landlord, came up with first and last month's deposit. Angel investors—one local, two from out of town—gave me seed money. I sold off existing inventory for cash flow, took out a merchant loan."

The Green Thing emerged slowly, painted green, reorganized by sun and shade requirements rather than pure aesthetics. Shade plants in shade. Sun lovers in full exposure. A logic to the arrangement that speaks to function and need.

"I want this to become a psychedelic Japanese garden," Hector explains. "An introspective space where you reflect on your life and appreciate the plants. Every plant is like a person. They all have their ideal look, their quirks. I want people to realize how sacred plants are."

He's learned their secrets. Wisteria responds to heat; honeysuckle to the photosynthesis period. "Wisteria will come out sooner in a warm spring. Honeysuckle waits for the equinox, consistent with the sun cycle." Plants think, deciding each morning based on available water what they'll do that day, how they'll grow.

Some plants he'll never sell. The white sage in front, pulled from the ground, transported carefully from Wildomar. "He looked so good, so gorgeous. I had to grab him." No name though. Too sacred.

A Western redbud went to the Nature Center—his favorite of all the redbuds from the grower, planted in their native garden where anyone can visit. "It looks really happy there. In that shadier spot, it grew wider leaves to catch more light."

And then there was Greg.

"I remember an April shower, early on. I was at Taryn's place playing pub games. Suddenly I realized, oh my god, it's raining. I need to put Greg in the greenhouse. Greg hated rain. I jumped up, drove here, grabbed this whole ten-gallon plant, and hauled him to safety. I couldn't see what I was doing, this huge sage in my arms, but I had to protect him."

A helper sold Greg while Hector was away. Somewhere in town, Greg grows on. Hector hopes whoever has him understands what they've got: the most fragrant sage, particular and difficult and worth every bit of trouble.

The Challenge Of Being Yourself

"Don't move here," Hector says when asked what he'd tell potential transplants. "Not if you don't want the challenge."

He means it. Idyllwild isn't easy. Jobs are scarce. Housing is difficult. The winters are brutal. The social scene is cliquish, divided by age and economics.

But for those who accept the challenge, who let the mountain show them who they are, there's something here. There's the possibility of transformation, of becoming the person you're meant to be by surviving the person you are.

"This place showed me who I really am," Hector says. "Before here, I wasn't as confident in my identity. But Idyllwild reveals your character. There's no escaping it."

He's found his people: Joe the landscaper who specializes in Japanese maples, musician friends like Carlos and Owen, the community of artists and dreamers and survivors. Jay who helped him at his lowest. He's found his purpose in soil and stems, in teaching people about shade and sun, deciduous cycles and seasonal change.

The Green Thing opens most days, weather permitting. Hector tends his plants, sells the ones he can bear to part with, protects the ones he can't. He plays clarinet when the mood strikes, cooks when friends gather, studies philosophy in the quiet hours.

He's found a home in the work itself.

At thirty, Hector has been poor and homeless, educated and ambitious, heartbroken and guilty, cold and hungry and alone. The mountain has chewed him up, shown him his insides, spit him back out. What emerged is this: a man who loves carefully, who names only what he must, who understands that sometimes the most fragile things need the most precarious perches, who knows that quality exists in unexpected places; in cheap cuts of pork, in second-hand clarinets, in plants that refuse to cooperate until you find their perfect spot.

"Everything's sacred," he says, eyes on the white sage that has no name. "But some things are more sacred than others. Plants are great. They're underappreciated, undervalued. People think they're just dirt that grows. But they're not. They're individuals. They're teachers."

Somewhere in Idyllwild, Greg grows on. Hector tends the others, the ones that stayed. The mountain keeps teaching. The Green Thing keeps growing.