Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There. This is a show where we explore big questions through intimate stories in the Great Outdoors.

Before we get started today, I wanted to let you know about an opportunity that's coming up.

I'm looking for someone to help me with marketing the show.

If you or someone you know has expertise in that area and you're interested in an exciting

part-time project, let me know. Welection.

Maybe it's the endorphins released by exercise, or simply being in the presence of wild natural beauty.

The fresh air and space have a tendency to coax thoughts to the surface, even if we weren't necessarily aware they were lurking there.

On today's episode, producer David Waters brings us a story about a connection with the outdoors

that changed the life of an opera singer named Emily Stewart.

Emily lives in New Haven, Connecticut, and her story is about an experience that enabled her

to escape a career she thought would make her happy

and move towards a life that actually did.

I wanted to be on Broadway. That's what I wanted to do.

I don't know that I ever realized I could sing. I just decided I didn't care enough to stop.

No, that's not true.

I wanted to do it.

I love music, and I love singing.

When I was six, my sister and I went to see West Side Story when it came on tour,

and we became unreasonably obsessed with it.

But it was just the two of us singing West Side Story,

so we had to act out all of the roles between the two of us. I started singing in choir

in fifth grade, and I guess there was kind of a moment of realization around 14, 15, when I would

...