you can come to central Pennsylvania, if you want to ride at all you'll get over your fear of that stuff. Ok, so there are a few trails without rock gardens, but not many. I am really just taking up mtb'ing again after not very much activity in the '80s, and it isn't easy to force myself to ride through rocks and dropoffs. I know other people can ride these trails, so that helps me push myself.

I was watching videos of how to ride through rock gardens the other day, and the main points are keeping momentum, picking up your front wheel (and occasionally your rear wheel), standing with your weight back a little, and generally keeping loose. Keeping momentum is the key point. It's really hard to do when you are afraid, but then the rocks just stop you and that's the end. One thing that I have been doing is just running over rocks on purpose. Actually riding up curbs is probably better practice in a way.

Let's say there is a dropoff with a rock at the bottom with enough space between the rock and the dropoff that a wheel will fit in there. You can't just slowly go over the dropoff, you'll endo. So as you go off with a little speed, pull up on the handlebars so you can hit the rock at the bottom in a way that lets the wheel roll over it. Then unweight the back wheel so that it doesn't slam into the rock too hard.