Hi, I'm Willow Belden and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.

Each of us has experienced a fear response, even if we didn't realize it.

It's that primitive part of our brain that chooses fight or flight, or freeze.

More often than not, fear responses are activated by day-to-day experiences.

It's rarely a mountain lion stalking us on the trail, and more often someone cutting us off in traffic or an email we receive at work that seems a bit backhanded.

But what do we do with that? What if the fear response our brain chooses doesn't serve us? How do we learn to control the way we respond to fear?

Today's episode takes us on a late summer hike up into the Rocky Mountains.

Because sometimes learning to control your fear happens in a dimly lit therapy office,

and other times it happens in a lightning storm on the summit of a mountain.

Christina Marcelli Sargent has the story.

In my experience, there are two types of screams.

One type is to ask for help, a desperate cry for anyone who may be listening.

The other type is more of an exclamation mark on the end of something that's already too late.

That night 22 years ago, my mom's scream was the second type.

I may remember the scream, but what I don't remember is how I got from my bedroom to the living room that night.

And just like I don't remember moving to get myself to the living room, I don't remember moving afterwards either.

I remember being completely frozen.

At the time, I didn't understand it. I didn't understand this fear response

that was keeping me completely immobilized, but with such a heightened awareness, I could take

everything in. That night, 22 years ago, the paramedics arrived, my mom scrambled around, my dad started talking

coherently again, someone got him a towel, his hair and clothes started to dry, and the paramedics

left. And yet I stood there, voiceless, still as concrete, while the scene changed and progressed

...