The old mountain road winds up to Crest like a ribbon wrapped around a Christmas present. This little community, perched in East County's highlands, has weathered more than its share of California's cruel seasons - devastating fires in '70 and again in '03 that left hundreds of homes as nothing but ash and memory. But on this bright December morning, the Crest Community Clubhouse hums with the kind of life that makes you forget about all that.

Inside, Julie the soap maker is telling me about monkey farts.

"The kids' faces when you tell them to come smell monkey farts," she says, grinning behind her display of artisanal soaps. "That's what makes it fun." She's liquidating her inventory after six years in business, but there's no sadness in her voice. Just the quiet satisfaction of someone who's made people smile.

A few tables over, Autumn arranges her Yule logs with careful hands. She learned to make them as a little girl, her father insisting they use only melted crayons and natural materials to hold the greenery in place. "No hot glue, no nails," she recalls. Though she's moved away, her mother-in-law still lives just down the road, and when she saw the craft fair sign at Thanksgiving, she knew she had to come back.

The clubhouse itself is a testament to renewal. Linda Hjelle, who wrote the history of Crest book, tells me how it rose from the ashes of the 2003 Cedar Fire, rebuilt by volunteer hands. "We're only about 3,000 people up here," she says, "but when something needs doing, people show up."

Then there's young Zion, all of eighteen years old, whose operatic voice fills the room like warm honey. He tells me how he discovered opera during the pandemic, of all things, when a YouTube algorithm served him Maria Callas singing Carmen. Now he's performed in three countries and recently backed Andrea Bocelli. "This community raised me," he says. "When I was starting out, I'd just go sing at neighbors' houses for practice. They'd listen. They'd encourage. They'd show up to my concerts."

I spot a CD by a Don Halte, "Welcome to My World". He was one of those rare souls who could teach math, coach sports, make music, and somehow leave every life he touched a little better than he found it. When his name comes up, faces soften with the kind of memories that grief can't dim.

But that's the thing about Crest. Like the native chaparral that springs back after fire with stubborn vitality, this community knows something about renewal. Young families are moving in, drawn by what the old-timers knew all along - that a community built on bedrock doesn't wash away in the storm.

As I drive down the mountain, the sun setting over distant San Diego, I think about how places like this work. How they hold both the old and the new, death and rebirth, monkey farts and opera. How they remind us that the most precious things we build aren't made of wood or stone, but of the bonds between people who choose, again and again, to show up for each other.

That's a Christmas gift worth keeping.

1 Corinthians 3:11-17