There are places that shape us, and then there are places we return to in order to understand who we've become. For Sam, Idyllwild has been both: a mountain town that offered him freedom as a teenager, refuge as an adult, and now, perhaps, permission to leave.

Some people are born between borders, and the geography of their birth becomes a metaphor for their entire lives. Sam's parents crossed from the eastern townships of Canada into St. Albans, Vermont, so their son could enter the world on American soil. It was a choice that would echo through decades—this pattern of straddling lines, of carrying multiple homes in his bones, of never quite settling into just one place.

The first three years unfolded in Canadian countryside, where forests and fields imprint themselves on consciousness before language can name them. Then came Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the high desert taught him about big skies and bigger silences, about altitude and expanse, about the strange comfort of isolation.

But it was a mountain town in California, a place he stumbled upon as a searching teenager and returned to as a restless adult, that would shape him most profoundly. Idyllwild would pull him back across years and miles, would give him freedom twice, would become both sanctuary and subject. And eventually, it would ask him the hardest question: does loving a place mean you have to stay forever?

The First Arrival: A Teenager Set Free

Sam discovered Idyllwild Arts Academy the way so many teenagers now discover their futures: scrolling online. Somehow, the boarding school's name surfaced, and something about it felt right. He convinced his parents to send him there for high school, and at fifteen, he arrived in the pine-scented mountains to study film.

The timing was perfect in ways he couldn't have known. "I was in the first year of the film program," Sam recalls. "It was very free, you know, because they hadn't figured everything out yet. They kind of let us just run wild with the equipment and do the kinds of things we wanted to do."

It was an education in creative freedom that would spoil him for more traditional learning. The film teachers hadn't yet reigned in their students with rules and restrictions. They handed teenagers expensive cameras and said, essentially, show us what you see. For Sam, who had always been drawn to cinema, it was formative. He fell in love with filmmaking, and with Idyllwild itself.

"That's what deepened my love for film," he says. "And I think that's why when I went to college, it was really anticlimactic."

After four years at Idyllwild Arts, he enrolled in film school in New York, expecting to continue the creative exploration that had defined his teenage years. Instead, he found rigidity where there had been freedom. "They were like 'you have to make a black and white two-minute film, no sound'. I was used to being able to execute exactly what I wanted to do."

The culture shock wasn't just artistic, it was existential. Going from the intimate safety of mountain life to the relentless kinetic energy of New York left him reeling. He dropped out, pivoted to music, and spent his twenties writing songs and playing in bands with fellow Idyllwild Arts alumni. He formed a band called The Rose with Thieves, wrote music with Trevor Hall, played guitar and bass, and learned to produce. Film, for a while, was left behind.

The Return: A Friend's Casual Suggestion

Years later, Sam had landed in Los Angeles, playing solo music and navigating the city's relentless energy. That's where he met Jenn. They started making music together, forming a creative partnership that would eventually become much more.

As their relationship deepened, so did their desire to leave the city behind and focus on their music. They knew they wanted out but had no clear destination in mind. Then came the conversation that would change everything.

"We were with a friend making music, a friend from Idyllwild Arts," Sam remembers. "And he was the one who suggested, 'Why don't you guys just go to Idyllwild?' And it was like I had never even thought of that."

It was Trevor Hall who planted the seed. The idea took root immediately. That same day, almost as a joke, Sam and Jenn looked at Craigslist for rental listings. By that night, they had committed to a place. Jenn had never been to Idyllwild before. The decision was made on instinct and memory. His memory of a place that had once made him feel limitless.

"I think it just felt so expansive," Sam says of those early days back on the mountain. "We didn't have a community yet or anything, and we were actually really isolated. We were in Pine Cove when we first moved here. But it had this amazing deck, and it felt like you were on the edge of the world. My early memories are just coming from the city and feeling expansive and unhurried."

Seventeen years ago, Idyllwild was a sleepy town with little retail culture, mostly what Sam calls "corny gift shops." There was no youth culture, no compelling reason to wander the village except to pick up necessities. But for Sam and Jenn, escaping LA's intensity, the town's quietness was exactly what they needed.

"Every time I came around the corner, driving into town, I would physically feel the stress of the world melt off a little bit," he says.

That sensation, the mountain's ability to strip away the accumulated tension of modern life, lasted about seven years. It was real, visceral, a kind of geographic grace. And while he doesn't feel it anymore, the memory of it still matters.

The Smell That Carries Him Back

On autumn evenings, when the air turns crisp and the temperature drops, Idyllwild fills with the smell of woodsmoke. Residents fire up their fireplaces and wood stoves, and the scent drifts through the pines, mixing with mountain air.

For Sam, that smell is a time machine.

"It's super nostalgic for me," he says. "The fireplaces in the air, that crisp air and the combination of different woods burning. That's something I initially experienced on campus when I was a teenager. It was in the air at night, and I was free. I was away from my family and experiencing that for the first time."

When he moved back to Idyllwild as an adult, that first autumn brought the smell back, and with it, all those formative memories from Idyllwild Arts. The freedom, the creativity, the sense of becoming someone. It's the kind of sensory nostalgia that can make a place feel like home even when other things are shifting.

Building Something New: The Shops

They came to Idyllwild to make music, to create together in the mountain's expansive quiet. But survival required something more immediate. Sam and Jenn started a music publicity company from their home, promoting independent artists and hustling for press coverage. It was isolating work: clients scattered across the world, days spent staring at screens, nearly a decade of grinding away on computers. They survived, but Sam was burning out.

"We always talked about having a shop," he says. "It was like, wouldn't that be so cool?"

The opportunity came through Wild IDY, a collective retail space where they could test their vision with minimal risk. They discovered not only that curating vintage clothing and pop culture ephemera was viable but that they loved doing it. When a space opened up in the Fort, they took the leap.

Ephemera became one of the first shops in what Sam calls "the new wave"—a post-COVID renaissance that transformed Idyllwild's retail culture. Later came Midnite Moon. Both stores offered something the mountain hadn't seen before: highly curated, taste-driven vintage pieces and cultural artifacts that felt like they belonged in Los Angeles or Portland, not a small mountain town.

"People are shocked when they walk in," Sam says. "They're like, I did not picture there would be a place like this."

It was a risk. The village wasn't exactly popping with foot traffic when they started. But rent was low, and they negotiated a deal that let them test the concept without too much stress. The gamble paid off. Now, Idyllwild has coffee shops, interesting galleries, and retail spaces that make it worth wandering. Sam and Jenn were the vanguard.

"I think we definitely pushed the culture forward," he says.

The Missing Piece: Connection

Despite seventeen years in Idyllwild, despite owning two successful shops, despite becoming a recognizable figure in the community, Sam hasn't found his people. Not really.

"I haven't had that many connections," he says with a laugh, imagining what Jenn might have said when asked the same question. "We haven't found what I would say is much of a community."

There are exceptions—the couple who owns El Buen Cacao, friends he genuinely loves spending time with. But they're planning to open a shop in LA, which means more time away from Idyllwild. The mountain's transience works against deep connection. People come, stay a few years, leave.

"We've had those experiences of losing friends for sure," Sam says. "I think maybe we're just very specific people. Either it clicks and you really want to spend time together, or you don't."

It's not that he dislikes the Idyllwild community. He feels safe here, knows people would help if he needed it, appreciates the tight-knit nature of mountain life. But there's a difference between appreciating a community and finding your place within it.

"I feel like there's some really incredible people up here," he says. "I just haven't personally found my people."

This absence of deep connection has become the crack in the foundation. It's the thing that makes him consider leaving, that makes the cycle feel complete.

The Creative Return

Lately, Sam has been reconnecting with his first love: filmmaking. He and Jenn just shot a short film, a hybrid project that's part store promotion, part narrative art. He edited it on his iPhone, scored it in his free time, did the whole thing with the kind of freedom he first experienced as a teenager at Idyllwild Arts.

"I never imagined I'd be able to shoot an entire film on an iPhone," he says. "It's pretty amazing. I have this multimillion-dollar editing suite in my pocket."

The film work feels like coming home to himself. It's given him a sense of purpose beyond the shops, a way to integrate all the parts of his creative life. He dreams of making more films, of finding a way to merge retail and cinema into something new.

But he's also realistic. The film industry is in flux. LA might not be the answer anymore. And the shops, which have been so successful, require his presence. For now.

"We have great employees," he says. "We're working toward being able to hand it off, potentially. It's just a process of scaling back our involvement."

The Departure That Might Come

Has he considered leaving? "Yes," Sam says without hesitation. "I think that cycle has come to an end. It's never been like, I'm planting my flag here forever."

The reasons are layered: the lack of deep connections, the winters that feel too long, the sense that he's done what he came to do. He's had the beautiful experience of returning to Idyllwild, of thriving here, of creating something unique and meaningful. But that doesn't mean staying forever.

"That cycle feels like it's coming to an end," he says. 

When the time comes—and it seems like when, not if—Sam imagines keeping the shops running with managers while he and Jenn explore what's next. Maybe more film work. Maybe expansion into other towns. Maybe something entirely new.

For now, he's grateful for what Idyllwild has given him: the creative safety to build something from nothing, the space to become himself twice, the smell of woodsmoke that carries him back to being young and free.He's grateful for the friends he has found, even while longing for the deeper connections that have eluded him.

"I'm very proud of what Jenn and I have created," he says. "Creating an immersive environment that brightens people's days, that helps people experience nostalgia and adds to their experience of this wonderful town."

The mountain called him home when he needed it most. It gave him freedom as a teenager and refuge as an adult. It let him build businesses and rediscover his art. And perhaps its final gift will be letting him go when the time is right, with gratitude instead of regret, with completion instead of escape.

Because sometimes loving a place means recognizing when your story there is finished. And sometimes coming home twice is enough.