Julia sits in her vintage shop on a rain-drenched Saturday, surrounded by treasures that have lived other lives. Her kitten, Sofia, prowls between faux fur coats and mid-century lamps, completely at home among the relics. A customer reaches down to pet her, and Julia laughs. "She's seven months old and thinks she runs the place. Honestly, she might be right."

Raised as the third of nine children in a small town near Cleveland, she grew up in what she calls "dogmatic atheism"—a household where science was gospel and anything else was dismissed. "It wasn't like, believe whatever you want," she explains, her eyes bright with memory. "It was: this is science, nothing else. Everything else doesn't fit."

But Julia never fit that box. Even as a child homeschooled in strict rationalism, she believed in magical possibilities. She believed the world held more than what could be measured and proven. And decades later, standing in a forest town four years into making it her home, she's learned she was right.

Fish Out of Water

The path to Idyllwild was long and winding. After public school proved too rough—she once stood between a terrified girl and her attacker on a school bus, getting knocked into the street for her trouble—Julia's parents sent her to Catholic school. There, officially Jewish but attending mass, she became a fish out of water. "Being an outsider comes naturally," she says with a shrug that's more acceptance than resignation.

After high school came Columbus, then San Diego, then years of corporate training work that she reveled in  making fun. "People never expected training to be fun," she remembers. "So when it was, when we were laughing and learning together, it felt like giving them something they didn't know they needed."

But what Julia needed was harder to name. It lived in the feeling she got every year when she made her pilgrimage to Sequoia National Park—that sense of coming home to a place she'd never lived. "In the forest," she says, "I feel loved by the trees. I know how that sounds, but I really do. There's this exchange of energy, this sense that I'm where I'm supposed to be."

The Trip They Never Took

She tried to share that feeling with her mother. After her mom turned seventy and started expressing fears about death—fears that surprised Julia, because her mother had always said she wouldn't be afraid when the time came—Julia planned a trip. Either to the Mexican pyramids her mother had always wanted to see, or to Sequoia National Park, to show her the heaven Julia had found in the forest. She told her, Mom, if there is a heaven, heaven is a forest.

"My mom chose the forest," Julia says, and her eyes fill immediately. "We picked a date for spring or summer. And then she died in April."

The tears come faster now, but she doesn't stop them. "Time alone with my mother was a precious commodity. Nine kids, you know? I could count on one hand how many times we'd been together, just the two of us. And this was going to be our trip. Just us. And we missed it."

The Dream That Changed Everything

After her mother died—suddenly, unexpectedly, after showing houses all day as a realtor— Julia was devastated and called out to her mother, demanding to know where she was, afraid that, if she could not answer, maybe her father was right and there was nothing, and this, she could not accept.She wrote  to her mother, spoke to her, he played music. She wanted to bridge the unbridgeable distance and get the answer she needed. She said, “I need to know that you are somewhere magical and beautiful and that I will be with you some day. If you don’t answer, I cannot face this.”

And then something impossible happened.

A former colleague, someone Julia trusted but who never spoke of such things, messaged her: I had a dream about you last night. In the dream, he saw Julia walking into a dying forest with a radiant woman who looked younger than her but unmistakably similar. The woman had curly hair, less curly than Julia's. She was glowing, smiling, pointing forward toward bright sunlight on the other side of the forest. Julia was crying, saying she was afraid. The woman kept reassuring her, her arm around Julia's shoulders, her head resting against Julia's in comfort.

"He described the dress I was wearing," Julia says, the words tumbling out between tears. "A dress with red flowers that my mom loved. I'd just told my sister I was going to wear it to the funeral. And he'd never seen a picture of my mother. But when I posted an old photo of my parents, he said: 'That's her. That's the woman in the dream. She looks exactly like that.'"

The last bits of the atheist indoctrination that had never belonged to her,  to believe only in what science had proven, disappeared." I told my aunt this story, hoping to give her something beautiful," Julia says. "She said, 'Oh no, I don't think that means there's something else.' And I thought: your mind is closed. That's sad." She pauses, wiping her eyes. "But mine isn't. I don't think anybody knows all the answers. But when something presents itself that's undeniable, I'm going to receive it and be thankful for it."

By the Skin of Her Teeth

Three years after her mother's death, with 3 of her 4 senior pets passing one by one during COVID's darkest days, Julia finally made her own trip to the forest. Not to visit. To stay.

She saw the house online and her heart started racing. "I just knew," she says. "The same way I knew when I said 'I'm not going to be in Ohio another winter' and electricity shot through my body. I knew this was my house and I was moving to Idyllwild."

She'd been here once before, sixteen years earlier, when the first snow fell and turned the forest into something magical. "I swore I'd never live in snow again," she laughs. "I left Ohio specifically to escape winter. But this winter felt different. It felt like coming home."

The realtor tried to talk her out of living in Pine Cove. "He said, 'You don't want to live there,' and I said, 'No, I really do.'" She bought the house by the skin of her teeth—her mother's estate giving her just enough to make it possible. The fears were real: what if she lost her job? What about fires? What about all the things that could go wrong?

"But there's always something," she says firmly. "If you wait for it to be safe, it never happens. I don't want fears to run my life." She moved with her blind Mini Pinsher, Isaiah, and he became a mountain man. (Wherever you want to include this)

Building Community in the Margins

Four years in, Julia has learned what it means to live in a small mountain town while working full-time from home. "It can be difficult to find your place when most things happen during the day," she admits. "I wish we had more evening options—coffee shops that stay open late, more places to gather after work."

But she's also learned that the friendships that do form here happen faster and deeper. "People who are open to meeting new people and you spark something in each other? They're much quicker to pounce on a potential friendship. It's like: let's exchange numbers. Let's be friends. Now."

And she's built her own community in unexpected ways. Her vintage shop—Mid Mod Mojo—doubles as a cat café where Sofia roams freely, climbing furniture and greeting customers. "If people don't like cats, they probably won't want to come into my space," Julia says matter-of-factly. On weekends, she walks Sofia on a leash through town, stopping at the coffee shop and bagel shop and record store. Sofia has her own Instagram account: Sofia of Idyllwild.

"I didn't intend to get her," Julia admits. "I'd just had surgery and lost all my pets. But someone posted on Facebook that they'd found this kitten and I went over and said, 'I'll foster her.' Ten minutes. That's all it took." She looks down at Sofia, who's batting at a vintage toy. "She found her way to stay."

Treasure Hunting, Like Mother Like Daughter

The vintage business itself feels like a continuation of Julia's mother's legacy. "My mother was a treasure hunter. She'd take us to yard sales and auctions. She was really good at spotting a gem among things." Julia pauses, her voice soft. "And not just antiques. She was a collector of human beings too. Babies and children and really cool vintage things."

Now Julia hunts for treasures herself, filling her shop with finds that have stories and history. "Instead of going and buying new junk, it's reusing, it's green. And I love knowing where things go—like when my friend Jenn got that faux fur coat earlier today."

She's also discovered that for her, vintage people are her people. "We understand each other. We all like hunting and finding cool things and appreciating the history of it all." It's how she met some of her closest friends here—including Jenn, a fellow vintage store owner in town, introduced by her husband who said, "I really think you two should be friends."

Collecting Good People

"I collect good people," Julia says, and it's clear this is a life philosophy, not a casual phrase. "You don't need to be like me, but you need to be someone I feel I can have fascinating conversations with. Someone curious about the world. Someone who cares about being positive."

She's found those people in unexpected places: while looking for a lost dog, she bonded with a woman who's now one of her closest friends. They go to performances at Idyllwild Arts together, taking advantage of the town's gift to residents—free admission to all shows. "One thing that's really cool is anybody who lives here can go to any of the performances for free," Julia explains. "My friends who are seniors on fixed incomes, they can go to all these incredible shows—theater, classical music, fashion, everything."

But she's also honest about the challenges. "People don't always think I live here. Maybe because I dress up, or because I have been told I have 'vacation energy,'" she says with a smile. "Someone once told me they thought I was a part-timer. I loved that about the vacation energy though. We should all have that all the time."

And there's the question that haunts any newcomer in a small town: "Would anyone check on me if we had really bad weather?" she wonders. "Do I have people here who would come? That feeling of isolation—I enjoy aspects of it, but you do realize you are isolated."

Still, she helps others make the move when she can. "If someone wants to move here and I meet them and they're amazing, I love helping them figure it out. It's my personality—if there's something I know or have that I can give you, it makes me so happy to do that."

Where Creativity and Nature Meet

When asked about the community, Julia lights up. "To me, this is the most progressive, most artistic forest community I looked at. We have so many creative people here—the school at Idyllwild Arts draws people from all over the world. And nature and creativity go together. I really believe that. Nature speaks to me. It feels like I'm where I'm supposed to be."

She's quick to clarify: "The community isn't just the people, although the people are a huge part of it. It's also the bobcat that comes through my yard. The stellar jays that land on my deck and ask for walnuts. The squirrels, the plants, the hummingbirds. Even the mountain lion that drinks from my yard at night. All of it is the community."

This expansive definition of community makes sense for someone who spent years in San Diego rescuing dogs—sometimes three or four at a time, keeping dogs with kennel cough isolated in her bathroom until she could get them well and could find them homes. "I saved about a hundred dogs," she says. "One cat—I tried with a kitten once and my cat was ready to move out."

Animals have always been Julia's chosen family. As a child desperate for pets in a household that kept bringing more babies instead, she rescued wild animals and longed for the forest. Now, finally, she has both.

Home at Last

On this rainy afternoon, Julia watches Sofia chase a toy across the shop floor. Outside, the pines bend in the wind. The whole mountain feels alive, breathing, sheltering.

"My child self would be amazed by this life," Julia says softly. "Her own place, her own business, animals in her bed, creating art, helping people, living in the forest. I think she'd say, 'I never could have imagined having a life this good.'"

She pauses, then adds with that familiar spark in her eyes: "So every once in a while I go: we did it. My child self and me. We made it to the forest."

And the forest, with its ancient wisdom and patient love, holds her close. Just as her mother promised it would, in a dream delivered through a stranger. Just as it always has, for those brave enough to listen.