FIRE'S OUT IN IDYLLWILD, BUT TOURISTS ARE SCARCE.

Byline: Gary A. Warner Orange County Register

The hikers are back on the Ernie Maxwell Scenic Trail, the climbers have returned to scamper up Lily Rock, and kids are chasing the gray squirrels around the Tree Monument totem pole downtown.

Most important of all, the fire engines are back where they belong: parked in their garages.

Life is returning to normal in Idyllwild a month after the massive Bee Canyon fire swept through the San Jacinto Mountains. The village of 3,000 survived unscathed, but word of its survival has been slow filtering out. The usually bustling mile-high resort now resembles a pine tree-rimmed ghost town.

``I guess people saw all those television pictures and thought we burned down,'' resident Reed Pennell said. ``But we're all alive and well - grateful to be here.''

You'd never know fire threatened what locals call The Hill. Driving the snaking 18-mile road from Banning, there's nothing but green forest and blue sky. No scorched structures. No blackened trees. No pall of smoke. The fire burned primarily southeast of town, scorching wide, unpopulated swaths of the San Bernardino National Forest.

Idyllwild is a high-country island sitting in a shallow bowl of High Sierra pine and oak, surrounded by the rocky San Jacinto mountains that push 10,000 feet above the desert floor. Strawberry Creek, one of several local streams and lakes stocked with trout, cuts through the area.

The town always has been a bit of a Southern California secret, overlooked in most guidebooks of the region. It places a distant third in the mountain-town tourism derby, behind the bigger resorts in Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead.

It has no major lake for summer boating or winter resort for the ski set. No luxury hotels. No five-star restaurants. No championship golf course. Idyllwild's main selling point has been tranquillity - a place to walk in the woods, to detox from the stresses of the workaday world.

Overdevelopment has lowered the town's charm quotient in recent years, but it's still tiny enough that the chain fast-food eateries haven't found it yet. On weekends, Idyllwild can be wall-to-wall tourists, jamming the restaurants and window-shopping the seemingly overabundant trinket and craft shops.

But Mondays through Thursdays, the hordes are back down the hill, leaving the town to the residents and those with enough leisure time to lope around for a day or two.

At 5,400 feet, Idyllwild is above most of the smog that chokes the valleys below. It was the air that got Idyllwild started as a resort, with the opening of a tuberculosis sanitarium in the 1930s.

Idyllwild is an outdoor playground, with excellent rock climbing, bird-watching and hiking. The town's focal point is a huge granite outcrop called Lily Rock, also known as Tahquitz Rock, that dominates the valley. Nearby is the ominously named Suicide Rock.

(Synopsis of ``The Legend of Suicide Rock'': Indian maiden, lover from another tribe, no one approves, if we can't be together in this world, etc., jump off rock, dead.)

Lily Rock and Suicide Rock are a rock climber's paradise - there are more than 200 routes of varying difficulty. With more than 275 miles of trails, the area has hikes that range from leisurely to strenuous. The most popular is the easy two-mile downhill Ernie Maxwell Scenic Trail from Humber Park to town. Those ready for a more strenuous challenge can make the half-day round-trip hike to Lily Rock using the South Ridge Trail.

Permits are required for all hikes, except the Ernie Maxwell Scenic Trail. Apply at the ranger's station on Pine Crest Drive in the center of town.

Accommodations are suitably mountain-kitschy, from rustic cottages to stone-walled inns. But eating in Idyllwild has definitely moved beyond your typical mountain-village greasy spoons. The Gastronome, known locally as the 'Nome, offers California and European cuisine downtown.

Information on weather, road conditions, directions and accommodations is available from the Idyllwild Town Crier Mountain Line: [phone].