Some people spend their entire lives searching for home. Others are born into it, flee from it, wander the world only to discover that home was always waiting, patient and immutable as the mountains themselves. Sarah's story is one of departures and returns, of learning that growth sometimes means leaving and wisdom often means coming back. It's about feeding raccoons in the twilight of childhood, learning Turkish in underground bars to avoid being robbed, and understanding that comfort, when left undisturbed, becomes a kind of beautiful prison.

The Leaves

There is a particular quality to autumn light in Idyllwild: the way it filters through sugar pines and catches on turning leaves, transforming them into stained glass suspended between earth and sky. Sarah remembers this light from childhood as she walked the residential streets with her mother, searching for leaves worthy of preservation.

"That's just yellow and green," her mother would say, rejecting most offerings with practiced dismissal. "That's not good enough."

What this hippie woman sought were leaves that held all the colors at once: amber bleeding into crimson, gold dissolving into rust, entire seasons contained in a single piece of nature. She would take the chosen specimens home and somehow render them imperishable, hanging them around their house like captured moments of beauty. It was a peculiar ritual, but then again, everything about growing up in Idyllwild in the 1980s felt touched by a particular enchantment.

Sarah was born in Orange County, but her mother had been camping on Black Mountain for over twelve years before that, drawn to this mountain community by something ineffable, something that couldn't be found in the flatlands. When Sarah was two, her mother made the rupture permanent. She left Sarah's father, abandoned the heat and concrete, and brought her daughter to the mountains. Rheumatoid arthritis had been diagnosed at thirty, and by forty, the year she bore Sarah, the disease was progressing relentlessly, exacerbated by Orange County's humidity and the inexorable pressure of city life.

"I just can't handle this anymore," she told her friends. "I'm moving to Idyllwild."

The dry mountain air offered reprieve. Up here, among the pines, Sarah's mom could breathe.

The Raccoon Whisperer

At four years old, Sarah's evenings followed an extraordinary routine. Her mother would call out, gentle and prescient: "Sarah, the raccoons are here for you, sweetheart. Here's the bowl of eggs."

Sarah would establish her stations in the front yard with half-boiled eggs still in their shells—a bowl of water, a bowl of eggs. Then she'd wait. The raccoons would emerge from the twilight, approaching this small child with a wariness that dissolved into trust. They'd extend their hands, and Sarah would place an egg in each palm. The creature would accept it with remarkable gentleness, dip it in the water to moisten it, then consume it with satisfaction.

Years later, when people warned her about the inherent danger of raccoons, Sarah would laugh. "I used to hand-feed them," she says.

From her early days in town, she also remembers Mountain Mike, an iconic figure who used to ride his horse into town, securing it at the horse parking installed specifically in front of Fairway Market. "I think it was made only for Mike," she laughs, "because he's the only one who ever used it." He'd arrive in full leathers and cowboy hat, his horse waiting patiently during his shopping excursions. He's upgraded to a motorcycle now, and the horse parking has been removed, deemed unnecessary infrastructure. 

It was the kind of childhood that could only flourish here, simultaneously feral and tender, wild and safe in equal measure.

But the mountain exacts its price. When Sarah was sixteen, her mother passed away. The woman who had fled the city for these healing heights, who had taught her daughter to perceive beauty in autumn's most ephemeral moments, was gone. Sarah graduated high school and, perhaps inevitably, departed.

The World Beyond the Mountain

Sarah spent two years traversing Europe: Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Netherlands. In an underground bar in Amsterdam, she joined strangers playing an elaborate spy card game, a tableau of international wanderers bound by temporary circumstance. They inquired about her accommodations for the evening, her trajectory, her plans. She had none. When they shared their departure for Turkey the following morning, she joined them without hesitation.

Seven travelers from various origins—Canada, Michigan, Ohio, Scotland, even one from Redlands—converged in Istanbul, where Sarah secured lodging in a hostel for three dollars a night. She walked into a tea house and approached a kind waiter with an unusual proposition.

"Will you teach me Turkish?" she asked. "I'm getting ripped off."

"Will you teach me American?" he replied.

They became friends, trading languages across cultural divides. She learned to read, write, and speak Turkish fluently, enough to prevent shopkeepers from exploiting her tourist status, from claiming all her cash for a simple loaf of bread. They remain friends to this day, corresponding occasionally.

"There was no structure, no security. I learned to be self-reliant, to make connections, to talk to people. It was an invaluable experience," Sarah reflects now. 

It also metamorphosed her from a shy person into someone capable of entering unfamiliar spaces and forging meaningful connections. "You can't be quiet over there," she explains. "You need to go places and do things. You need to be outgoing."

Six months into her Turkish experience, President Bush Jr.'s political decisions rendered Turkey perilous for Americans. The hostel issued warnings: conceal your passports, deny your nationality, claim citizenship elsewhere. At night, they could hear distant detonations, hostels housing Americans being systematically targeted. They had no choice but to flee.

She evacuated to Greece, where the 2004 Olympics were taking place. The American delegation hired her immediately: housing, sustenance, employment, all provided. She labored through the games, caught her breath in the temporary sanctuary, and when the Olympics concluded, Sarah returned home.

The Truman Show

When Sarah walked into her childhood friend Christine's house in Idyllwild after two years abroad, she experienced a profound disorientation.

"I felt like I was in the Truman Show," she says now. "Everybody was doing the exact same thing they were doing two years ago."

It wasn't criticism. It was recognition that while she'd been learning Turkish in subterranean tea houses, Idyllwild had remained immutable, perfectly and permanently itself.

Christine—twelve years her senior, a childhood friend Sarah had always preferred to her age contemporaries—posed an uncomfortable question about her future aspirations. Sarah's response was careless: she'd work at the pizza place, perhaps Camp Maranatha. Christine rejected this complacency immediately.

"That's nothing," Christine said. "What do you want to do with your life?"

She suggested psychology, caregiving, working with populations who needed advocacy. That conversation became a trajectory. Christine helped Sarah perceive beyond the immediate, beyond the comfortable. She asked questions that made Sarah ruminate for days, sometimes weeks, until small epiphanies bloomed. It wasn't dramatic mentorship—no grand pronouncements or transformative advice. Just the right interrogations at the right moments.

"She was good at helping me think," Sarah says simply.

So Sarah moved to Oregon. She stripped herself of everything, car, dog, possessions, and began fresh. She secured an internship working with at-risk youth, adolescents who had absconded from foster homes, who teetered precariously between rehabilitation and juvenile detention. She became a kitchen manager at a university, a position that proved both terrible and stressful. She pursued a degree in psychology. She constructed a life with deliberate intention.

But Oregon never felt like home.

The Long Way Home

Nine years she remained in the Pacific Northwest. Nine years of waiting to feel settled, rooted, authentically present. That sensation never materialized.

Then Christine called with a simple imperative: come home. Sarah protested—she visited annually for a week, had just been there, would return in eleven months. But Christine persisted with gentle insistence. Sarah could relocate permanently, secure employment, recommence her life in the place she actually belonged.

With barely three thousand dollars and friends counseling against the decision, Sarah submitted her resignation.

By the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Sarah was back in Idyllwild.

She rented a room and began searching for work. On impulse, she walked onto the Camp Maranatha property, not seeking employment, merely requesting employment dates for applications. The director was on the roof conducting repairs. When he turned around at the sound of her voice, he nearly fell off the ladder.

"Oh my God, you're home!" he exclaimed, climbing down rapidly. "We need you!"

His response was immediate and unequivocal: she shouldn't seek employment elsewhere because they would hire her immediately. The position offered only fifteen to twenty hours weekly, but it was foundation enough. She supplemented with odd jobs—dog walking for severely obese animals who shed substantial weight under her rigorous hiking regimen, snow shoveling, property maintenance.

Then one day, after Sarah finished shoveling her walkway, an elderly woman opened her door with unexpected news. "Sarah, I just read in the paper that South Bay Cable is hiring for an engineer."

The interview felt catastrophic. They inquired about machinery experience, welding, auto mechanics, engineering knowledge. All domains where Sarah had no background. The interviewer frowned continuously while recording notes, and Sarah grew increasingly certain she'd failed spectacularly. Then Tom Hanson, whom she'd assisted just three weeks prior, descended the stairs and provided an unsolicited endorsement.

"She's an amazing person, Ken," he told the interviewer. "You need to hire her. She'll be your best employee."

The interviewer's demeanor shifted instantly. He reversed course, took her paperwork to Human Resources, and processed it immediately in her presence. Three days later, she started as a floor employee in training, then worked her way up. That was twelve years ago.

A Temporary Forever 

Now Sarah works the four p.m. to four a.m. shift at South Bay Cable, doing extrusion and other tasks. On her off days—Friday through Monday—she delivers food for the food bank, assists with property cleanouts and fire abatement, volunteers wherever someone requires help. She hikes weekly, usually ascending to the high country: Fuller Ridge, Mount San Jacinto Peak, Webster Trail with its vertiginous descent to a river teeming with frogs.

She's pursuing a master's in mechanical engineering from Caltech, paying cash for her education the way she's always financed everything. She abhors debt.

She's still in the same rental since 2013. But she knows this isn't permanent. She'll complete her master's, secure a more suitable career, relocate to a small city close enough for weekend hikes.

"I don't think this is the end-all, be-all for me," she explains. "For a period of time, it's been helpful. For my own peace of mind, for figuring out priorities, for finishing my education. But Idyllwild is very comfortable. And if you stay comfortable, you're not growing. You're not maturing. You're just a Truman Show person." 

"It's important," Sarah says, "to go ahead and pursue things. To explore. You have to do things that stretch you."

"I feel bad for the youth growing up in Idyllwild. They probably think this is it. And there's a huge world out there."

She knows this because she's lived both sides of the equation. Before Europe, she thought Idyllwild was everything. "I was more closed," she admits. After two years abroad, navigating foreign languages, fleeing political violence, securing work at the Olympics, forging connections in underground bars, she returned with a worldview that would never be limited again.

When she leaves, she wants to be remembered as honest, hardworking, dependable, reliable. "If I could help, I would," she says simply.

It's autumn again, and somewhere in Idyllwild, leaves are turning all the colors at once, the way Sarah's mother taught her to perceive them. The light catches them precisely, transforming ordinary moments into something worth preserving. 

Like the leaves her mother collected, Sarah holds Idyllwild close while knowing that nothing remains forever. Some things are made permanent not by staying, but by the love we carry when we go.