The paintbrush hovers mid-stroke, suspended like her thoughts. Nikki stands on the first rung of a ladder on this bright Sunday afternoon, transforming the Health Center's windows into a winter wonderland. Christmas decors dancing across glass, ornaments dangling from invisible strings. Her daughter and a friend work beside her, their laughter punctuating the quiet mountain air. 

When Nikki pauses to answer a question, her hand moves absently through the paint, swirling colors while she searches for words. Only occasionally does the brush return to the window, leaving behind strokes that will greet patients come Monday morning.

This is where she belongs now, painting holiday cheer on windows in a town she'd never heard of five years ago, in a place that has become more home than anywhere she'd ever lived.

Arriving on Broken Wings

September 2019. Nikki drove up the mountain running from heartbreak, fleeing a bad breakup in Riverside with her eight-year-old daughter beside her. She was pregnant. Her aunt lived here—had moved to Idyllwild for a job at the art school—and offered refuge. It was supposed to be temporary. A place to catch her breath, to get back on her feet. She had her real estate license, a plan to sell houses and move on.

"I didn't know what I was going to do," she says, the brush stilling in her hand. "I just needed somewhere to land."

She landed, and then she nested. 

The first thing she did in town was attend the Halloween parade. She stood at the edge, watching strangers stop and embrace, catching up like family reunited. She watched the easy intimacy of a community that actually knew each other's names, each other's stories, each other's griefs and joys.

"I wanted that," she says simply. "The community."

What she didn't expect was how quickly a mountain town could wrap itself around a broken heart and become family.

Her aunt knew the office manager at the Health Center. One connection led to another, the way things happen in small towns where everyone is somehow linked. Nikki got the job as a medical assistant. She'd been in healthcare since she was eighteen, had bounced through radio and marketing and real estate, but medicine was the thread that kept pulling her back.

Nikki went through her entire pregnancy at the Health Center, working there as her body changed and grew. When her son was born, his first doctor's appointment was at the same clinic where his mother drew blood and filed referrals and learned the names of everyone in town.

The Hands That Caught Her

Then she met Arlene.

The question comes gently: "Who has influenced you most here?"

Nikki's face crumples. Behind her glasses, tears begin to stream. She wipes them away with her hoodie sleeve, paint-stained hands trembling, but the words won't stop coming.

"Arlene is amazing," she manages, her voice breaking. "She's basically adopted me."

The tears flow harder now. "I'm so grateful for her."

Arlene, the receptionist who has worked at the Health Center for thirty years. Arlene, who drove down the mountain with Nikki when she didn't have a car and wasn't old enough to rent one alone, just so she could see her son's father who was working in Bakersfield. Arlene, who comes to baseball games and birthdays and school functions. "More than my own family," Nikki says through her tears.

After her grandmother—her "Nanny", who raised her—passed away three days before Christmas last year, Arlene became the person Nikki calls when her kids are sick, when she needs advice, when she's at her lowest. Arlene has seen it all and stayed. At seventy-something, she still travels more than Nikki ever has, still cares for her ninety-eight-year-old mother in Oregon for weeks at a time, still shows up every weekend to water the clinic plants and clean; work that isn't in anyone's job description but feels like tending to home.

"She inspires me," Nikki says, composing herself. "If she can do all that in her seventies, what am I doing?"

The Family You Choose

Nikki's own family dissolved like morning fog. After her grandmother died, there was no one left to call. The aunt who brought her here? They don't speak anymore, though she lives just up the street. The distance of estrangement is sometimes measured in feet, not miles.

But in Idyllwild, Nikki has collected a new family. Patients who drop off Christmas presents for her kids. People who stop her at the mailbox to ask how her daughter is doing in high school now. Seniors who call themselves her grandma, her grandpa, her uncle.

"It's definitely become my family," she says, and the paint resumes its dance across glass.

Her coworkers—Arlene the receptionist, Keith the office manager who has driven up from Hemet every single day for thirty years, Talia the nurse practitioner who actually listens to Nikki's ideas—they've become her work mom and work dad, her support system, the people who make staying worth it even when she's thought about leaving for better pay down the hill.

"The patients," she says firmly. "They're what made me stay."

In primary care, you see the same faces twice a month sometimes. You learn their stories. You watch them age. You become part of their lives in ways that don't happen in big clinics where patients are just appointments on a schedule.

Loving the Lonely

Being raised by Nanny left Nikki with a tender spot for the elderly. When she died last December, skipping Christmas entirely seemed like the only option. Nikki's kids went to their other grandparents' house. Nikki sat home alone with her grief.

This year, she noticed something. Since Nanny's death, she'd been gravitating toward her elderly patients, subconsciously seeking that connection. And what she saw broke her heart: so many of them were alone.

One patient was 103, had lived in Idyllwild since the eighties. Nikki visited her after work, helped her with things, grew close. The woman eventually moved away to be with family for her final days. Then there were the spouses left behind after their partners died, suddenly navigating the world solo in a place where winter can be cruel. Nikki has lost so many patients this year.

"Winters up here are very hard, especially for elderly people," she explains. "The town shuts down. They can't afford to run their propane, can't afford firewood. They're cold. They're alone."

So she started a program. At first, it was simple: connect people with seniors to give them gifts during the holidays, a way to remember Nanny. But it snowballed. Hundreds of people reached out, individuals, businesses, wanting to help. Her vision expanded: eventually, she wants it to become a companionship program. Adopt-a-senior. Have coffee once or twice a month. Make sure nobody is ever really alone.

"There used to be a senior center here," she says, "with county funds and trips off the hill. It fizzled out. Now there's nothing for them. Not even a phone list of people they could call."

The nominations that came in revealed the heart of this community. People nominating neighbors they barely know but see at the grocery store and sense could use some love. People nominating the man who's been here fifty years whose kids moved away and who has no family left.

"Just seeing that alone is very comforting," Nikki says.

An Introvert vs. the Community

Here's the thing about Nikki: she's not naturally social. "This is very much out of my comfort zone," she admits, gesturing at the conversation itself. "I'm an introvert. I go to work and then I go home and I crochet and craft and do old lady things."

She makes baby blankets, gives everything away because she doesn't have room for it all. Recently she's taken up making beaded plants. Horror-themed, naturally, since she loves all things spooky. Her Furby costume for the Halloween parade took three weeks to construct, two hundred packs of tinsel from the Dollar Tree, and an ungodly amount of hot glue.

But she pushes herself out into the world for her kids. Her daughter is fourteen now, started here in third grade. Her son is five, has spent his entire life on this mountain. They need more than a mother who hides at home, no matter how much her nature pulls her toward solitude.

"I feel like it's not fair for them to have to sit at home because I'm afraid to go out and meet people," she says.

So she takes them places. On weekends when her son is with his dad, she and her daughter drive to Los Angeles for food. She once drove three hours for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, because that's the kind of devotion food inspires in her. They explore little shops in town, get coffee, try to hit every restaurant. She signs them up for baseball even though she never played sports as a kid.

The day she knew she'd stay was at her son's first tee-ball game. Patients from the clinic showed up to watch. People she'd cared for, whose blood she'd drawn, whose referrals she'd processed: they came to cheer for her five-year-old.

"I was like, 'I'm staying,'" she says. "I want them to grow up with this."

The Price of Paradise

But paradise has its costs. Nikki paid seven dollars for a single onion when she first moved here, needed it for dinner and made the mistake of shopping local. Now she drives down the hill for groceries because even with gas, it's cheaper than shopping in a town where everything is expensive and nothing is convenient.

There are no medical specialists here. No Uber, no Lyft. Two doctors' offices, and that's it. "It's like living on the moon", she says. Isolated, cut off, its own small world spinning separate from the valley below.

She understands why prices are high, it's a tourist town, volume is low, bringing supplies up the mountain costs money. But seven dollars for an onion is criminal. "There needs to be more leniency for locals," she says. "They should give people a local card at the store."

And then there's the social cost. When she first arrived, they called her a "Flatlander." She doesn't know when the cutoff is, when you transition from newcomer to local, but after five years, after working at the clinic and meeting hundreds of people and serving this community, she likes to think of herself as local now.

"People are very walled off to new things," she observes. "They don't like change." It can be both good and bad, the preservation of what makes Idyllwild special, but also the resistance to improvements that could help everyone.

Still, she wouldn't trade it. Down the hill her kids couldn't walk around by themselves. Up here, if her daughter is out in town, ten people will text: "Hey, saw Layla today." That kind of safety, that kind of community surveillance born from care rather than nosiness; you can't put a price on it.

The Smell of Rain

Ask Nikki about her favorite smell on the mountain and she doesn't hesitate: "When it rains. Right after it rains. When it hits the concrete."

Summer storms are her favorite time of year. The clouds rolling in dark and dramatic, the thunder so loud it shakes the windows, raindrops huge and heavy like the sky is falling in pieces. She's convinced the raindrops are bigger up here. Maybe it's just perception.

The storms give her permission to stay home, to retreat into her natural state. Though last winter—her first winter in Pine Cove—she learned the terror of mountain snow. She got stuck on the highway, couldn't get her chains on, car immobilized while strangers stopped to help dig her out. One man gave her a ride home. After the snow settled, she posted on Facebook: "My car is stuck. Please watch out." Someone reached out, came to help excavate her vehicle. A stranger on a tractor pushed the snow away. More strangers helped push her car into her driveway when she got stuck there too.

She'd never met any of them.

The Legacy of Small Things

How does Nikki want to be remembered? The question catches her off guard. She's thirty-four, busy surviving and raising kids and decorating windows and crocheting blankets and trying to help lonely seniors and learning to be social for her children's sake. Legacy feels distant, abstract.

"I've never thought about that," she admits. Then, slowly: "Just give back. Really, I would love to be remembered like that. Check in on people."

She's a firm believer in karma, that what you put out in the world returns to you. She's seen it work both ways. Do good things and good things happen. She tries to do as many good things as she can.

Standing on that ladder, paint on her hands, tears dried on her cheeks, daughter working beside her, this is giving back. These windows will greet patients on Monday morning, seniors who can't afford to heat their homes, people who are alone, people who need to know someone is thinking of them.

Nikki moved to Idyllwild running from something. She stayed because she found something she didn't know she was looking for: a place where strangers become family, where introversion can coexist with community, where giving back isn't a grand gesture but a series of small paintings on windows, phone calls to isolated seniors.

The mountain caught her when she was falling. Now she spends her days catching others.

"If you do good things, good things happen," she says, and returns the brush to the window, adding one more stroke of light to the approaching winter.