DEL DIOS -- "Nudie" is a six-foot-plus rail of a man with piercing blue eyes, a long gray beard and a torturously twisted straw cowboy hat who can be seen almost every day walking his passel of a half-dozen border collies through Del Dios.

Nudie, also know as Warren Newell, is just one individual in the eclectic mix of artists, musicians, professionals and engineers that call this rural community south of Escondido home.

Dozens of residents gathered Sunday, six days after the Witch Creek fire ripped through town in its march from Ramona to Encinitas. The nearly 200,000-acre fire claimed more than 1,100 structures, including at least 16 homes in Del Dios.

Sunday's town hall meeting and barbecue at the neighborhood's old firehouse was a typical affair for the tight-knit community, where folks still wave as you pass by in the car. It's a place where people stop in the middle of the road, turn off the car and chew the fat.

"This is a community meeting to get everybody networking so we can get everything back to the way things should be," Newell said outside the firehouse -- now the town hall and the unofficial local history museum. "This is a normal thing we do here in Del Dios."

During the meeting, Janet Nelson asked for lodging for her tenant, a woman due to give birth any day now. Local resident Greg Englestad said a friend in Arizona had offered his second home in San Diego for use by fire victims.

"I know somebody who has a resource and here is somebody with a legitimate need, and I was able to put them together," said Englestad, a software engineer and bass player.

Drawn to the trees, trails and funky fishing shacks that sprung up along the shores of Lake Hodges when the dam was built in the 1920s, many residents have lived in Del Dios, dubbed by some residents "the land that San Diego forgot" for decades.

Glass artist Garry Cohen moved in 1970 from his family home in Tustin's orange groves to Del Dios. Cohen said he was among many hippies attracted to the wooded rural feel and cheap rent of this community, a narrow strip of sloping land wedged between Lake Hodges and Del Dios Highway.

A building moratorium in the 1950s stopped development there, virtually guaranteeing that the community would remain a hodgepodge of rough-hewn lake cottages and unpermitted additions -- some simply plywood, nails and paint.

Cohen and fellow glass artist Cherrie La Porte Cohen have transformed their hillside acreage into "The Glass Ranch," a terraced property dotted with colored glass sculptures amid shady green gardens. They live in the house, work glass in a studio up the hill, and give tours to art pilgrims.

"I think people who live here have a unusual creative spirit," La Porte Cohen said. "They're not the mainstream. They're a little nontraditional in their way of living and lifestyle, and I think that this community opens it up for all kinds of people to be accepted.

"We have quite a few artists here. We have writers, technical writers, painters, ceramicists, musicians -- and as I've been here, I've gotten to know these people, and that has added more to my own artistic ability."

Richard Foster, a member of the Town Council and the Del Dios Water Board, said most homeowners in the neighborhood care more about quality of life than the cold hard cash that development could bring.

"It's a very conservative community in that we don't like change," Foster said Sunday. "This is a little jewel in North County and we've worked very hard to keep development from coming in here. We'd rather just keep the community as it is -- the small little homes and flavor that you just can't find around here anymore."

Renee Ricketts said she moved to Del Dios 11 years ago and has come to love the small town feel.

"We're a very tight community," said Ricketts, a mixed media artist with pieces now on display at the Mingei Museum in Escondido. "Everybody knows everybody else, and if they don't know them personally, then they know them by sight."

Rickets described Del Dios as a "live and let live" community populated with "very eccentric people, very plugged-in people, and artists -- a lot of artists."

For Cohen, a denizen of more than 30 years who has seen four wildfires scourge Del Dios, there is no other place on Earth to live. In Del Dios, the Cohens and others in the woodland community, appear to have discovered a secret to living well.

"This is a place where you can take the risk of being yourself," Garry Cohen said.

Contact Philip K. Ireland at (760) 901-4043 or online at pireland@nctimes.com.