the essence

Mountains used to freak me out. When I was little my family used to go to cabins in the mountains in the Fall. While we had fun, I had this horrid feeling being around the mountains - I felt trapped. If you were in a valley (read: where the teeny tiny towns were that also freaked me out because they were so small) then the mountains were all around you trapping you in. If you went up on a mountain, the only place to go was back down surrounded by other mountains.

I'm going to attribute most of these feelings to growing up in very flat Florida. Maybe when northerners visit us they feel trapped by all the water surrounding our peninsula. But at least you can escape on the water.