As I am nearing another yearly sobriety birthday, I’ve been doing some reflection of late on how my attitude and life in general has changed. One of the areas of potential growth I have been contemplating is how my attitude towards fear and my coping mechanisms have changed. Fear used to be one of my main motivators, spurring me to action. That action was usually to run away as quickly as possible from the object, issue or person that had caused the fear or freeze in place, immobilized, hoping the “threat” passes by.

A few years ago, I took someone from out of state on a hike in a state park that unknown to me happened to be notorious for snakes, so notorious in fact that there was an entire display at the visitor center on the snakes in the park. The exhibit was advertised outside the building, so I remained in the car (I am not fond of snakes). Despite my trepidation, for some reason we decided to continue with our planned hike.

We had walked a little way and I was wandering down the trail talking incessantly as I am prone to do when I happened to glance over and spot a COILED snake! I used another “F” word (not FEAR which might have been appropriate, but you’ll have to guess which one, shouldn’t be too hard to figure out) and turned and ran. I ran fast. I don’t usually run, but I probably would have had an excellent time if someone was there with a stopwatch. Too bad they didn’t utilize snakes to spur me into running at gym class. I was always that girl walking at the end of the line, with the gym teacher trying to coerce her into running. Apparently, I WILL run with the right motivation.

I made it back to the car, out of breath, when it dawned on me that I now had a new problem. My hiking partner was nowhere to be found. I was at a loss. Was it possible she had been gotten by the snake??? If so, there wasn’t much I could do for her. That being said, I knew the right thing to do would be to check on my out-of-town visitor in case the snake hadn’t completely ingested her. I tentatively walked back, looking for snakes the entire route. Finally, I spotted my hiking partner. She had her camera trained on the trailside brush and had finished taking pictures of the dreaded serpent that had just slithered off. As there was no snake anymore, she suggested we continue. I looked at her aghast, as the place seemed to be holding true to its reputation and was loaded with unsavory reptiles of the slithering variety. She was serious, and I’ll ‘fess up – my hiking partner was my mother so obviously this aversion from snakes did not come from my maternal side of the family.

So, we continued. I missed out on most of the scenery, as I was doing side to side sweeps with my eyes of the trail. Then I got nervous, as there was a rocky embankment on my right, and I know snakes like to hide (and possibly jump out at unsuspecting hikers) from these types of spots. I was very uncomfortable and sick to my stomach with fear. But then something miraculous happened that interrupted us from continuing to trudge down this trail. A few drops of rain started to fall. SAVED. I looked up from my snake surveillance long enough to tell my mom that I was concerned about lightning and we needed to head back to the car ASAP. Now, she did notice that it was a RAIN cloud and NOT a storm cloud. However, I insisted. Our hike ended prematurely, and we returned to our car.

Today, I realize that maybe taking a calm and rational approach to things is perhaps a better way. Sometimes, when we take a step back situations tend to resolve themselves, just like that snake slithered off. And sometimes things appear scarier than they really are. For example, after carefully examining the photographic evidence from my mother’s camera it was determined that the snake was in fact a non-aggressive bull snake and not a king cobra or black mamba.

Over the last almost seven years, I’ve had ample opportunities to face down my fears – health related, loss related, safety related, and the list goes on. The difference is now I don’t have to run or hide through using alcohol, my old go-to. In the end, alcohol never really provided an escape. It was like the fear response I’ve observed the neighborhood baby bunnies. Just ask my dog. He managed to snag one when it sat frozen in place, too immobilized to move. Many times, I’ve had to swerve around these little bunnies sitting wide-eyed, in the middle of the road, hoping the object of their fear, my car, will pass them over (which I make EVERY attempt to do).

I wasted so much time that day of the hike doing snake surveillance that I probably missed out on quite a bit of beautiful scenery and didn’t get to enjoy the time with my mother as much as I had hoped. But the beautiful thing about life is I did learn something. Hopefully I won’t get so distracted by my fear of potential snakes along the path to miss out on the next opportunity life presents.