I certainly wouldn't laugh. I consider myself an emotionally very robust person, but was once reduced to a blubbering wreck in circumstances which may not have been entirely dissimilar. I've posted the story in a couple of places, but it's kind of relevant here, so I'll cut and paste. I can't say that my experience was one of panic - it was more along the lines of what a more spiritual person might call a spiritual experience. But maybe the two things are not entirely unconnected:
...
Some years back I was walking up above Monsal Dale in the White Peak area of Derbyshire. It's a tramp I've done many times and I'm very familiar with the landscape, so I wasn't seeing anything new.
One of the advantages of being self-employed is that I can shift my timetable around somewhat, and tend to walk during the week, when the paths are quieter than they might be at weekends - and on this particular day, barely a soul was around.
At a point around halfway along the route I made my way up from Monsal Head, a local beauty spot with car park and great views over Ruskin's vale of Tempe - somewhat famous, along with the viaduct that crosses it, from old British Rail posters. Although connected to a focal point for tourists and walkers, the path I follow is not so obvious, and - even on busy days - rarely seems to get used.
I love the White Peak's rolling hills and crags, the ever present network of dry-stone walls, the sense of height that I always feel when on the limestone plateau; and the day in question was truly beautiful - warm, but with a perfect breeze, a deep blue sky, the path crazy with wildflowers, and the hawthorn in bloom.
The day was so beautiful, in fact, that I had to keep stopping - more than usual - to soak it all in.
And then, at some point, a sense of unreality started to strike me: the sky seemed almost too blue, the wildflowers almost too vibrant, the breeze whistling through the walls almost too relaxing - everything was almost too beautiful. At first, I shook off this uncanny (although not unpleasant) feeling, but as I continued walking the sense of an awesome, otherworldly beauty actually increased to a level that became almost overbearing, as if something was quite literally taking my breath away, and - although this is going to sound nuts, now - there came a point where I thought I might actually have died on the path, and be seeing something not entirely of this world. I actually looked down at myself, and back along the path, to see if I was lying down somewhere - and I seem to recall, cliche though it might be, that I pinched my arm as hard as I could.
When I reached the junction with another path I was to take, I actually choked up and sobbed - I think more in the way of some sort of physical release, rather than an emotional response - and did what every true born Brit does in times of emotional overload: sat down and had a mug of splosh.
If I was a spiritual or religious person, maybe I'd say that I had a spiritual experience - or some sort of epiphany. Now, when I look back on it I think of it as the land emphasising something that I knew all along - that nature is absolutely fucking awesome...and don't you forget it.
Although not taken on the same day - these two pictures are from the precise point of view of the place I took my rest, and the conditions are more or less as they were on that day:
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