There are people who belong to towns, and people who belong to the spaces between. Peter is the latter: a voice from the woods, a threshold guide who lives where the human world ends and the wild begins. 

Peter doesn't remember looking at the house. He remembers the boulder.

When his real estate agent brought him to what would become his Pine Cove home seven years ago, Peter did what comes naturally to him: he lay down on his back on a sun-warmed rock and stared at the sky. For fifteen minutes, the realtor showed Peter's wife Ann around the property while Peter remained perfectly still, communing with granite and pine. Finally, the realtor emerged: "Peter, do you want to see the house?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Peter replied from his prone position, "but I'm really an outdoor person and this kind of... this is my dream spot."

The house, as it turned out, was secondary. What Peter had found was that liminal space between human habitation and wilderness where certain souls feel most at home.

"I'm literally at the edge," Peter says now, gesturing toward the National Forest that begins where his property ends. "Sometimes my former students will show up and knock at my door and say, 'We were just going to head out into the forest, and we wondered if you could give us an adventure.' I really am kind of the opposite of a gatekeeper to the forest. I'm an usher; I help people find their way in."

From Manhattan to Mountain

The path began, improbably, in Manhattan. Born on that most urban of islands, raised mostly on Long Island, Peter was one of those "odd little boys" who spent his childhood with wildflowers rather than baseball. His academic journey zigzagged: two years on Long Island bouncing between biology, sociology, and psychology, then west to California's College of the Redwoods in Humboldt County, on to Sonoma State, graduating from UC Santa Cruz with highest honors, finally landing at UC Berkeley for a master's in educational psychology, then a Ph.D. in science education.

Between degrees, he briefly entered the computer industry, working directly under Steve Jobs at NeXT, the company Jobs started between his two Apple tenures. But the high-tech world wasn't where Peter belonged.

After Berkeley came New Jersey, then fifteen years at an intentional community in middle Tennessee, a former hippie commune. There, Peter coordinated a school, teaching science outdoors, living among 150 to 200 people in a dense web of interconnection.

It was beautiful and suffocating in equal measure. "If you live with 150 people, that's who you see, regardless of how much you love them," Peter explains. The relationships were often accidental, born of proximity rather than genuine affinity.

Finding the Forest Island

When they decided to leave, Peter's cousin—who owned property in Idyllwild—reached out. "She said, 'You should move to Idyllwild. I know you're kind of a little bit hippie and a little bit redneck, and we have a town that's got some of each.'"

Peter wasn't impressed with the town itself. "I'm not a huge fan of any towns," he admits. But when his cousin showed him the trails, the views, the way the trees pressed close and the desert spread far below, that's when he knew.

"My wife really loves the desert, and I'm kind of a forest person," Peter says. "So this was perfect because we're in a forest island in the middle of the desert."

They bought the house not quite grasping what it meant to back onto National Forest. "I went for a walk after we moved in and just saw the views," Peter remembers. "There's this spot that's a ten-minute walk from here, and it's like you're standing in Yosemite. Every morning, Ann and I walk there and say almost the same thing: 'I live here.'"

Pete's Perch

Peter and his neighbors have named the places that matter to them. His friends Matt and Laura call their regular route "Laura's Loop." Peter claimed a rock as his meditation spot, a place to observe the changing seasons. Matt dubbed it "Pete's Perch."

It's off the trail, invisible from below. One day, a bicyclist underneath seemed lost. From his hidden perch high above, Peter called down: "You're on the right path!"

The cyclist looked around, confused, searching for the voice.

"But of course," Peter added, "all the paths are the right paths."

The cyclist shook his head and rode on, probably thinking the forest itself was talking to him. It's a perfect encapsulation of Peter's role here: the voice from the woods, appearing when needed, disappearing just as quickly.

Teaching at the Threshold

Peter's work with children through Hilltop Education Connections extends this philosophy. Twice a week, he takes kids ages eight to fourteen into the forest to teach ancestral skills and rekindle what he calls "a relational kinship worldview", the understanding that we are nature, not separate from it.

"Our ecosystems are collapsing because of bad behavior on the part of humans," Peter says. "And I see that as going hand in hand with a worldview that we're separate from nature, separate from each other. Indigenous people who lived closer to the earth felt part of one with nature."

Each class begins with a circle: How are you feeling? What are you grateful for? What are your requests of the universe?

"They often say they're grateful for nature," Peter reports. "Sometimes they say, 'I'm so grateful I get to come to this class.'"

Peter's own request is nearly always the same: "May enough people realize that we're all in it together and that we need to be kind to each other and the planet, so that we can turn around the current trajectory."

Altitude Adjustments

Living at 6,000 feet requires adjustments. Coming down to the flats "feels like an oxygen bath"—suddenly the air is thick and easy, almost luxurious to breathe. When they first arrived, they tried to hike up to the Saddle on Devil's Slide trail. "We probably made it 500 yards. The oxygen deprivation certainly made a difference."

The altitude affects cooking too. Water boils at 208 degrees instead of 212. "Pasta really takes forever. It says eight minutes on the package, and it takes fifteen minutes up here."

It's a metaphor Peter might appreciate: how processes work differently at the edge, how you must adjust expectations, learn patience, understand that standard instructions don't always apply.

Writing and Coffee Berries

Peter is finishing a book, Explorations in Ecology: Playful, Science-Rich Outdoor Activities for Children and Their Adults, collaborating with Ann, who brings refinement to his shoot-from-the-hip style. "I'm kind of the rough draft. She's refined and I'm not."

One chapter discusses how human beings—supposedly evolution's pinnacle—have forgotten how to feed themselves. His metaphor: "It's like we live on a high-tech cruise ship and we don't know how to swim. And if this cruise ship starts sinking, it's going to make you really nervous."

His interest in plants comes from wanting to feel the truth: that he is a natural being, part of nature. Last weekend, he visited a spot where Coffee Berry grows. "I asked the Coffee Berry tree if I could take some of her last berries, and promised I would plant them carefully and take care of her children."

He'll plant them in his Berry Bramble, though rabbits and deer usually get the raspberries first. "I'm just visiting here. It's part of the forest. I believe human beings should give back gifts they get from the land, and I get a lot from this land."

Choosing Community

One paradox Peter discovered: his community became more intentional after leaving the intentional community. "When I moved here, my community was way more intentional. It was kind of a cool thing to get to pick my friends."

He met Michael Duval at the Nature Center, drawn together by plants. Then Bruce Watts, another plant enthusiast. Roger he met in the forest—saw him bent over examining wildflowers and declared, "You're my friend now."

Most friendships are walking-bound rather than house-bound. "I don't think I've ever been in Bruce's house," Peter muses. "Our relationship is way more walking-bound."

Loving The Isolation

Los Angeles proximity—appealing to many—is a net negative for Peter. "LA is basically a symbol of everything I don't like about industrial civilization. It's Tinsel Town, and tinsel is the symbol of evil as far as I'm concerned."

He describes himself as a "nature-loving introvert," and Idyllwild gives him permission to fully inhabit that identity. His brother asks, "How do you drive on these roads all the time?" But Peter would rather drive up the mountain at midnight than down at any time of day.

Does he feel isolated? "In terms of not having enough people around, not at all. The degree to which there aren't a lot of people is just positive."

Because Idyllwild isn't easy to live in—no convenient shopping, no nearby hospitals—people who choose it have chosen it for a reason. "I feel like I have something in common with everybody, even if I might not have much in common with them at all."

Not Quite Rooted

For all his love of this place, Peter admits he's not entirely rooted. His adult children live in Michigan and New Mexico, and his dream is clear: "My dream of the next stage is to be a grandparent. If either of my kids had children, I would be there in a heartbeat."

If his son stays in Albuquerque, Peter and Ann would move there for grandchildren. "Particularly in what humanity is heading into, I would like to huddle up with my family."

It's hard to imagine leaving, but he's honest that it wouldn't be traumatic. "I feel more connected to my kids than to any place else. I love it here, but I don't feel super rooted here."

Maybe it's because he's only been here seven years. Maybe his fifteen years at the farm taught him that even deep community ties can be left behind. Or maybe Peter learned something essential about himself on this mountain: "Being deeply connected to nature is more important to me than being deeply connected to people."

It's not that he doesn't value human connection—he does. But he likes the other animals too, and the plants, dirt, streams, rocks. "I could thank Idyllwild—more the place than the people—for letting me be myself, really. I have become more authentically me here."

Becoming Authentic

Peter used to care what adults thought of him—"way, way, way too concerned," he admits. Something shifted on the mountain. "I'm happy being me, and people can either like me or not like me. That's up to them."

Then the qualifier: "Dogs and kids like me, and that I care about. I really don't care much about whether adults do or don't like me."

His dogs are buried in his Berry Bramble. They don't have a living dog now, though their friend Mary's big dog Shea is essentially their goddog, visiting regularly. They don't want another because Ann likes to travel "to the middle of nowhere somewhere else."

That's Idyllwild culture, Peter notes: people don't brag about cruises; they brag about going on vacation and not seeing a single human being for ten days.

The Forest Voice

Peter is part of what he calls the "collapse-aware community", educators who acknowledge industrial civilization is dying. "I think we're in end-stage capitalism and our social systems are collapsing. Industrial civilization dying is fine by me. I think it's a must for the planet to survive."

His connection to indigenous wisdom has deepened here. "I'm sure this rock was a holy place," he says, noting the Cahuilla people who call these mountains home.

When Peter isn't teaching or writing or lying on Pete's Perch watching seasons change, he's living out his role as threshold guide, the shaman at the edge. Students knock asking for adventures. Friends join him on hikes. The mountain instructs him in patience, attention, the art of becoming indigenous to a place.

He's learning to speak the language of Coffee Berry and Ponderosa Pine. He's teaching children—and himself—that the world is not a machine to be fixed but a community to be joined, carefully and with great respect.

Every morning, he wakes between four and five, watches sunrise from his perch between human and wild. The light comes slowly at this elevation, painting granite gold, pine needles silver. The air is thin but clear. The pasta takes forever. The neighbors are far enough away.

This is the life Peter has chosen, or that has chosen him. A life at the edge, where forest meets mountain meets man, where all paths are right paths, where the voice calling from rocks might be human or something older, wilder, more essential.

He is home, and he is not home, and maybe that's the most honest way to live at the edge of things: grateful for the ground beneath your feet, ready to leave when love calls you elsewhere, knowing that wherever you go, you carry the forest inside you, and the forest doesn't mind.