She counts time in winters, remembers the season she shoveled so much snow she told her husband they had to move, and understands why so many people leave. But her roots run too deep to pull up, even when the mountain tests her resolve. 

The memory arrives unbidden, simple and perfect. Saoirse steps onto her porch, just a few months into mountain life, and the scent of pine fills her lungs. "I felt like I was camping. I had this thought popping in my head like, 'I'm gonna have to go home soon.' And then I realized, 'oh, wait I am home'. I don't have to leave."

Ten years later, she still catches herself in that moment of grateful disbelief.

Saoirse grew up in Temecula, visited the mountain a handful of times to play in the snow, then moved out of state. When she and her husband returned to Southern California, they landed in Hemet. "We hated living in Hemet. Strong words. We did not enjoy living in Hemet."

So they kept driving up the mountain to visit, to breathe, to remember what peace felt like. "We just kind of kept coming up here to visit and get into the nicer weather and just be somewhere beautiful." In 2016, the stars aligned. They bought a house in Pine Cove.

Her husband, from West Virginia, was used to weather, to snow, to the particular challenges of mountain living. Still, adjustments had to be made. Four-wheel drive vehicles. Understanding that these grades, these steep mountain roads, demanded respect and preparation.

But it was worth it for the silence. For the transformation from city cacophony to mountain stillness. "You walk out on your porch and it's just quiet and still and peaceful and smells so nice," she says. They sit together sometimes, she and her husband, on their porch at night. "We'll look at each other and be like, we get to live here. We don't have to listen to a highway and horns and fighting."

"A Theme Park for the Weekend"

When asked to describe Idyllwild to someone who's never been, she doesn't reach for the usual Chamber of Commerce platitudes. "It's kind of like a mountain Disneyland," she says with a laugh. "I mean, that's how I feel like tourists behave when they're here. A theme park for the weekend." 

It's not always a compliment. There is something about the way visitors treat the town as an amusement park, a temporary escape, that can grate on full-timers. But she gets it too. The town does have that quality of unreality, that sense of having stumbled into somewhere too charming, too perfect, too unlike the rest of Southern California to actually exist. 

"We're in Southern California, but we're at 6,000 feet and it snows and it's crazy. It's wild." The difference is, she's learned, between those who visit the theme park and those who stay to run the rides. Between tourists chasing magic and residents living with the daily reality beneath the enchantment. 

The Mountain's Particular Magic

Ask Saoirse what makes this mountain special—not just any mountain, but this one—and she doesn't hesitate. "This mountain is really special. It tends to draw a certain type of person, the more spiritual people." She explains what she's been told: the mountain is high in quartz, which has properties of amplifying energy. "I feel like whatever energy you bring to the mountain is what you're gonna get back, magnified." 

It's not just mystical talk. She's lived it, felt it work on her. "A lot of people move up here and they start feeling clarity or purpose. It helps you get in touch with your calling, or just your soul's purpose. I feel like I've changed a lot as a person since moving up here."

During COVID, when everyone was forced to sit with themselves, she doubled down on new practices: breath work, energy work, the kind of practices she'd never explored before moving here. "I did a lot of introspection during that time. I've started incorporating a lot more energy work and breath work." Sound baths have become a particular passion. "I love sound baths. It's such an easy way to get into that nice, meditative state and I tend to have little revelations, little ideas always come when I'm able to just clear all the noise out a little bit." She's thinking about expanding into leading breath work classes, offering something new to the community. It feels like a natural evolution, this deepening into practices that help people—including herself—pause, breathe, and listen to what emerges in the silence. The mountain, it seems, keeps teaching her new ways to exhale. 

The changes run deep. "I'm a lot more open, just in general, to life and spirituality. I've made friends with so many different types of people and people that I never would have met or interacted with in any other way, just by being in such a small community. I've learned a lot about humanity in general, just being in such a close knit community."

A Lesson in Authenticity

It's that small-town intimacy that sharpens everything. "It amplifies the good and the bad. There's small town drama, but there's also people that will, at the drop of a hat, be there for you. Like, did you run out of bread and your car is broken down? Someone will be there for you."

Most importantly, the mountain has taught her authenticity. "I've learned a lot about how I want to interact with people and how I like to be perceived by people, which is really more genuine than it ever has been in my life. I feel like I can actually just be myself and let people decide if they want to hang with me or not."

She explains that the nature of mountain life demands a certain protective clarity about where you end and others begin. "I think I'm better at boundary setting." The mountain has taught her to incorporate different personalities into her life while also knowing when to step back, when to protect her energy. In a place where you can't be anonymous, where everyone sees everything, you learn quickly that authenticity isn't just about openness. It's also about knowing when to close the door. 

Building a Life, One Friendship at a Time

Finding her people took time. "I've sadly been through a lot of people, a lot of friendships that just didn't quite make it," she admits. Idyllwild can be cliquish, especially with the locals who grew up here. But she found her core group—two really close friends, their own little tribe. Their daughters hang out. They support each other.

She met her best friend through school, through a case of mistaken identity. Their daughters, both with long blonde hair and blue eyes, looked "eerily similar" in their TK-Kindergarten combo class. "They would walk out the door and we would have to do a double take of like, whose kid is that? Because they look so similar, it's crazy."

It's the small, silly details that build intimacy in a small town.

She's found her haunts too. Alpenlow, the wine bar in the fort, has become her spot. She's there about once a week, often on industry nights on Mondays. Higher Grounds for coffee and protein smoothies. The gym most mornings. And of course, her boutique spa, her second home, where she's expanded from massage therapy into aesthetics. "When I went to school, there was no other aesthetician on the hill," she explains. She saw the gap and filled it.

The Weight of Weather and the Gift of Inconvenience

But mountain living demands resilience. She counts time in winters now, not just years. Three winters ago—or maybe two, the measurement imprecise—they got five feet of snow in Pine Cove. "It was constant shoveling and my husband works off the hill, so a lot of the stuff ends up on me. I was shoveling, shoveling, shoveling, and at one point I told my husband, we have to move. I can't keep doing this."

Then spring came. The crisis passed. "Not every winter is like that. You get an easy winter and you're like, okay, I guess I can."

The changes are profound. "I'm a lot more open, just in general, to life and spirituality. I've made friends with so many different types of people and people that I never would have met or interacted with in any other way, just by being in such a small community. I've learned a lot about humanity in general, just being in such a close knit community." 

The lack of conveniences—no Grubhub, no quick runs to a big grocery store, no easy anything—has become a gift in disguise. It forces a different pace, a different priority system. "I feel like it almost gives your nervous system a minute to get into that parasympathetic state where you're not rushing and stressed all the time."

Her priorities have crystallized: family, business, close friends. "If I was living off the hill, I would still be feeling a little scattered, focusing on too many things at once."

The mountain has simplified what matters. "There's not a lot of conveniences up here. You kind of just figure out what's important to you. It's definitely brought my gaze more inward. There's not a lot of things to do, not a lot of places to go. So it's like, okay, I'm just gonna hang with my family and maybe have a friend over for dinner. It's definitely made me focus on my immediate circle."

What Success Looks Like

Success, for Saoirse, isn't measured in square footage or profit margins. She worked out of her house when she first moved to Idyllwild. Last September, she moved into a small space in town. This past June, she expanded into her current location; two doors down, but bigger. She now has three practitioners working with her: another massage therapist, another aesthetician, and someone doing Thai massage.

But that's not what makes her feel successful. "One of the things that the mountain teaches you is contentment. Because there's not a lot of distraction. You have to deal with yourself and you have to face yourself."

She has clients she's been seeing for nine years now, nearly her entire time on the mountain. That continuity, that trust, that's the real success.

"I do feel pretty successful in most areas of life as far as taking care of my family and showing love to people around me and running my little crazy business. I think you learn a lot about who you are in this type of environment and about who you are with other people and how you interact with people. I've definitely learned a lot about what makes me happy."

The Wisdom of Staying

For Idyllwild's future, Saoirse doesn't wish for much change. "I kind of hope it doesn't change that much. I think it should just be this nice, chill, artistic, spiritual community that people come to to get away and maybe spend a year and have their experience and then carry that on."

She understands the flow now, the people who come and go. "That was a little bit isolating when it first popped up here until I figured out who was going to stay and who I could stay friends with." The turnover is part of mountain life, she's learned. Not everyone can handle the winters, the isolation, the constant confrontation with yourself.

But for those who stay, for those who let the mountain work on them, there's a particular gift. "It's such a nice little eclectic community. Obviously, there's gonna be people that you don't agree with, but where are you not gonna get that? It is a little more amplified up here because there just are not as many people. So the people that you have big differences with seem like more of a thing. But I don't know, besides that, it's just cool. I like the variety."

She still reminds herself, stepping onto that porch, breathing in that pine-scented air: she doesn't have to leave. This is home. Not the place she's visiting, not the escape from real life, but the real life itself: quiet, challenging, intimate, and hers.

"We get to live here," she says, as if the wonder of it hasn't faded. As if those words still carry the weight of gratitude they did ten years ago.

The mountain amplifies everything you bring to it, she says. She brought a searching heart and a willingness to change. What the mountain gave back was a sense of belonging she'd never quite felt before, and a community that demands authenticity even as it offers grace.

Ten years in, she's still learning. Still becoming. Still grateful for the unexpected gift of finding herself by staying still, by finally exhaling, by realizing she doesn't have to go home because she already is.