Mary sits in her Idyllwild home, surrounded by towering pines and the kind of quiet that only a mountain town can offer. It's the longest she's lived anywhere, nearly closing in on a record if she makes it three more years. For a woman whose life has been defined by movement—Pennsylvania, Coronado, Panama, Denmark, Germany, Cambridge, Maine, San Diego, and all the spaces in between—this stillness is both earned and revelatory. 

Three marriages, five children, and countless addresses have led her here, to a place where she's learned something unexpected: maybe humans aren't at the top of the pyramid after all. Maybe the trees have been above us all along.

A classmate named Priscilla Presley

Born in Pennsylvania to a military father, she hopscotched from Coronado, California, to Panama, back to Coronado, then to Denmark at twelve. In Copenhagen and later at school in Wiesbaden, Germany, she encountered a young classmate named Priscilla Presley, then fifteen and dating Elvis. "A big moment," Mary recalls with a smile.

After returning to Coronado, she enrolled at San Diego State to follow a boyfriend. When he dumped her, she dropped out, inspired by Jack Kerouac's writings about not wasting life. She joined Vista Volunteers during the War on Poverty, lived in Venice California for a year, married another Vista volunteer, and moved to Cambridge for three years. A son arrived, then a move to Maine, then back to San Diego.

Her first husband left her for another woman when she had three children. "That was very painful, but it was probably one of the best things that happened to me because I realized that I was totally capable of taking care of myself."

Years later, she married again, had two more children. When her daughter prepared to leave for college, she knew how miserable Mary was. "She said, 'Let's get out of here!' So that was all I needed." She asked for divorce.

The Captain and the Coast

As a community college counselor—"the most satisfying career I could ever possibly have"—Mary built a life of independence. She had her own house, two dogs, and the life she wanted. "I didn't miss having a man in my life," she says, though she joined Match.com out of curiosity. "I always felt like I would like to have a man as company."

She met several men but decided she was "too aloof to attract a man. I have so many things going on. I'm never gonna give my heart away."

Then, just as she was ready to cancel her Match.com subscription after her first grandchild was born, she met him: a surfer, commercial fishing boat captain. "There's something about a captain," Mary muses, "maybe because my father was a captain. And he was a fisherman, and a naturalist, which I always liked to be in nature."

He would drive from Solana Beach to her San Diego house every night except weekends. After her second grandchild was born, Mary retired at sixty-five. "I didn't want to be like all the politicians in Washington who work forever." She moved to the coast to be with him. Six months later, they married.

The Third Time's the Charm... for Heartbreak

She had bought this house in Idyllwild as a family retreat, a place for her children in LA and his children to gather. He didn't want her to buy it, sensing it was her escape route. He was right. "I loved him, but he had already given his heart away to another woman," Mary says quietly.

One weekend, after his daughter and grandchildren visited, something clicked on the drive home. "I was going to defrost some chicken because his brother-in-law was in town and lonely. Then it hit me: I don't know if we'll be together long enough for the chicken to defrost."

She forced the conversation. He'd met a botanist on a trip she'd encouraged him to take so she could have time alone. They'd fallen in love. That night, Mary left. A year after buying the house, she moved to Idyllwild permanently.

"I was heartbroken for about a year. I couldn't believe it. The first year I was here, if I met anybody, the first thing I would say was, 'I've been divorced three times.' I just felt like, let's get this over with."

But a year and a half after leaving him, clarity arrived. She had two dogs now. She'd gone on a Road Scholar trip and done "all these things I kind of figured I'd never get to do because I was with this guy who just wanted to do what he wanted to do."

"Once again, that was the best possible heartbreak you could have ever had," she says, her voice steady now.

A Town That Takes Its Time

Mary first knew Idyllwild as a child. Her father would go off to sea, so her mother would bring Mary, her sister, and the dog to rent a house off Tollgate for a month when Mary was eleven. "It was kind of a ramshackle, dusty cabin. I thought, this isn't the beach," she laughs. "But probably within a week, I was totally settled in."

Years later, when considering retirement, she'd thought about New England. Visiting Montpelier, Vermont, she'd imagined "the coffee shops, the gray-haired women getting together and talking about books." But Idyllwild was closer to LA, where her children lived.

The town has its own rhythm, its own standards. "When I first was here, I would hear from people: if you're here two years, we might take you seriously." She's crossed that threshold now, though she admits she's become more discriminating herself. The weekend crowds remind her of living at the beach. "I'm privileged enough to live here all the time, so I have to tolerate them."

If she lives here three more years, it will be the longest she's ever lived anywhere in her entire life.

The Breathing Forest

Mary became a forest bathing advocate almost by accident. During her training to become an interpretive guide, she stumbled upon an article about the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku—forest bathing—developed in the 1980s when technology began consuming people's lives. A minister of forestry in Japan had taken groups of businessmen into the forest for weekends, returning them with measurably lower stress hormones and elevated spirits.

But it was the science that truly captivated her: trees emit oils to protect themselves from insects and to communicate with each other. These oils contain phytoncides, chemicals that, when breathed by humans, increase the production and activity of natural killer cells that attack viruses. "That subject had all the things in it that I would think would really be memorable and useful to people," Mary explains.

Now, after more than eight years of living full-time in Idyllwild, her understanding has deepened into something more profound. "My whole concept of humanity and that whole pyramid of life where we're at the top; I don't think we are, actually. We are certainly not above and maybe below many other species, including trees, in terms of how well we get along and deserve to have life."

She pauses, remembering her grandson who used to love beating the bark of trees. "Now it's just like, oh no, you're not doing that." It's a small thing, but it represents a fundamental shift. "After about five or six years, I realized I'm a totally different person than I used to be."

The Protest That Grew

In January 2017, after Trump's election, Mary knew she had to act. All the longtime Indivisible activists were going to the larger protests in Palm Springs. But Mary remembered four boys from Idyllwild Arts Academy standing on the sidelines at a pre-election protest. She'd gotten them to stand on the street and hold signs. "They were so engaged and so proud of themselves. I thought, we have to have something here."

She organized a protest. Nine people showed up. "It was really embarrassing." None were the Idyllwild Arts students she'd hoped for. Some attendees looked embarrassed themselves, likely thinking they'd go to the bigger protest next time.

In February, she tried again. Thirty people showed up. Some Idyllwild Arts students attended.

By March, 150 people showed up at the garden near the arts supply store. "All the people who had been leaders came back. So now there's a full-fledged group with new members." 

"That's when you go and you have faith in humanity," Mary says softly.

Her current passion is a program from Columbia University called the Builders Movement—four weeks of exercises and research about detoxification of political discourse. It's deeply personal. Her older sister, just fourteen months older, is "wildly on the end of the continuum—MAGA, Christian nationalist, you name it, she's there."

They haven't really communicated in two or three years. Yet Mary talks to her sister in her head all the time, rehearsing conversations that might bridge the divide.

From her community college days, her greatest skill has always been engaging people "in taking themselves seriously, understanding who they were and what would have meaning to them and how they could transform themselves if they chose."

The Arts That Bring Them Together

The quilting groups, the painting groups, the galleries of Idyllwild Arts Academy. They create an ecosystem where creativity flourishes. "It just started with a seed of people who were artists, and then you come up here with artistic impulses, and it's so easy to find groups."

"Everybody that comes to Idyllwild suddenly becomes an artist," Mary observes. "Particularly women. They probably always had artistic impulses, but now you have the time and you don't have all the distractions of being somewhere else."

She's noticed the same phenomenon doesn't exist in Julian, the mountain town in San Diego County. "I don't think it has anything like the art here."

She judges her attachment to places by how many photos she takes. The alpine glow at sunset is her favorite time of day. When she left Solana Beach, where she'd lived right next to the lagoon, she'd photographed egrets and the beach constantly. "Probably a year into being here, I realized I was taking as many photos of being in the forest as I did being on the coast. That was my sign of, oh yeah, so you have matched the beauty."

Off the Trails, But With a Dog

Mary's favorite places are "when I'm totally off the trail, and I have a view, and I'm pretty sure I won't encounter anybody." She never used to be like that: adventurous, willing to wander off established paths.

When she first arrived, even the Nature Center trails intimidated her. One trail in particular had a tree leaning over it, creating a tunnel effect. "It looked like you were going through a tunnel, and it just looked scary." She mentioned this fear during a forest bathing talk at the library.

Three women approached her afterward. They wanted to forest bathe but were afraid to go into the forest alone. Mary's first question: "Were you scared of the wildness or the men?"

"The men," they answered.

Mary has had a couple of encounters with men "that don't do what they're supposed to do, which is to make a woman feel comfortable." Nothing truly threatening, but enough. "I personally wouldn't go in the forest without a dog."

Connecting the Dots of Life

Retirement has given her time to look back at her life, "to the point that you actually can connect all the things that brought you to the point where you are." She's at that point now, able to see the thread connecting the military child in Coronado, the Vista Volunteer in Venice, the abandoned wife, the community college counselor, the woman on Match.com, and finally, the forest dweller who has learned that trees might just be wiser than humans.

When the wind moves through the pines, particularly the Jeffrey pines whose vanilla-scented bark she can smell on hot days. She practices using her senses the way forest bathing teaches. Birds calm her with their songs; there's science for that now too.

She would only consider leaving if her children became too anxious about her safety during fire season, wind storms, when something feels like it's encroaching. "The last time I left was fairly recently when it was really windy. I just felt like I'm not going to let them be tormented that I'm up here alone."

After three divorces, five children, countless moves, and a lifetime of searching, Mary has finally found what she didn't know she was looking for: a place where humans aren't at the top of the pyramid, where the forest breathes medicine into the air, and where taking newcomers seriously after two years isn't a judgment but a gift. The gift of time to become who you're meant to be among the trees.