On a summer family vacation to the upper peninsula of Michigan several years ago, I went trail running on a gorgeous system of cross-country ski trails, everything was going great until I turned around a corner and was overcome with the feeling, “let’s get out of here fast.”

I don’t know why that happened. There was nobody else around, and I couldn’t hear any sounds that sounded like someone hiding behind some trees or bushes, but I just knew that I wanted to hightail it out of there as quickly as possible…

It was the summer of 1998. I was an intern at Pacific Crest Outward Bound School in Bend, Oregon. I was on a 2-week course in the 3 Sisters Wilderness in Central Oregon, assisting the two instructors and teaching some naturalist classes to the students on the course. The final part of the course was to summit a mountain called Broken Top. Broken Top is a crumbling volcano that looks as if it could topple right over when you look at it.

Nature heals when pondering decisions, solving problems, getting through waves of grief, handling stress and anxiety, personal upheaval, and all the waves of life we ride on the journey.

When I was a young adult, I experienced a massive panic attack.