As in the title, what is or are your landscapes?
What is the environment that brings you peace and joy, soothes you? What do these landscapes make you think? Do they bring to mind something feral and wild, yet subdued by man’s tresspass? Perhaps they make you feel deep and dark and green and mysteriously hidden. Are you a person who likes the seemingly barren and bleak deadly beauty of a desert? The playful tease of waves on the ocean beach?
Where do you live emotionally?
Chalkland. The Downs, for example. Cuckmere Haven will do very nicely.
j
Nothing lowers my blood pressure like the view of the hills from the lineup north of the Pismo Beach pier. A striking green in the morning and a golden brown in the afternoon.
Mountains. Mountains must be in my view. Growing up, they were to the east (superior direction, inferior mountains), and now, to the west (inferior direction, superior mountains), but at least they’re present. Vast open nothing, or even rolling hills does NOT do it for me. Too open, nothing to give the horizon distinction and a sense of separation, and dare I say it, majesty.
I live in the desert now:
But always miss the ocean:
And the redwoods:
And urban Chicago in between:
All were beautiful to me, in different ways.
I badly miss the Cascades range, near my former home in Seattle. Deep forests for me.
I’m happy just about anywhere in nature if the weather isn’t extreme and I can enjoy a modicum of peace and quiet.
I love Pismo, been going there since the mid-80s for rest and relaxation. These days I get down there a couple of times a year and stay at the Kon Tiki Inn for 2-3 days.
That’s Smith Rock State Park in Oregon. Been there a few times. Here’s a photo I took some years ago:
For me, it’s the mountains and rivers of Alaska where I grew up that are burned into my memory. It’s where my heart is and will always be.
I wired that place for pay-per-view porn in the 1990s.
The answer to the multiple questions in the OP varies, but what brings me joy on a deep and immediate level are tiny streams and waterfalls and healthy-looking nature, mostly provided by sufficient lime in the soil. These are somewhat at odds with each other since in limestone rock per se, there are not a lot of tiny elevated streams since the water sinks through the rocks quicker.
In Florida, there is another conundrum. You have hills, but not a lot of limestone hills, and shelly limestone bedrock on the plains surrounded by sediments of marl that presumably had eroded from it, both of which can look healthy and green. But the hills do not look healthy and green. Very few places have hills and beautiful greenery. Plus, since the plains are flat, it is easier to give people access to the lakes that are in them, whereas the lakes in the hills are harder to mold since they are in a depression, so tend to be inaccessible or private.
The one place in Florida where it seems to all come together for me is Wekiva Spring State Park. A lot of springs seem like they ought to also produce greeny greens but most do not that I can remember. This pond just looks so awesomely pleasant.
The other place is Monte Sano State Park in Alabama, which does happen to have a confluence of small creeks with waterfalls and limestone terrain. The waterfalls even have very tiny caves behind them where the water has dissolved the rock. And it feels safer to explore these than the equivalent for shale since the shale could fall down at any time. Unfortunately I can’t find a good representative picture of Monte Sano showing everything all at once.
But here’s Wekiva.
Sometimes I get a sixth sense that a place has a lot of lime because I get that “well manicured lawn” sense of joy deep down in my brain and I look for sources of where that comes from. For instance, East Greenbush NY has shale bedrock but limey soil which would explain why this lawn looks so perfectly green.
As opposed to the link to the Chalklands, which has chalk bedrock but maybe clay soil, and it looks grand and pleasant but doesn’t give me that “green lime lawn” feeling. But it’s possible that my mind is deceiving me, which it does some times.
Heh…before my time.I started staying there about 10 years ago and they had something like a 40-channel cable offering.
Nowadays their TVs have a splash screen that invites guests to plug their streaming device into the spare HDMI port and watch whatever they want. (Which works a lot better than the Chromecast option available in a growing number of places lately)
I can almost see my old family home in Shell Beach in this shot. But not quite. 
Like others, I do love the ocean and the mountains. But quiet forest solitude is what calms me.
Whether the redwoods (no, it’s not me):
Or my own:
I’m soothed by the cool quiet of trees.
Indeed it is! Just a short drive from where I live now (Bend, OR).
All in all it’s a beautiful area, with a bit of mountains, desert, and forests, but no ocean or redwoods.
Smith Rock / Misery Ridge (the top part of it) is endlessly gorgeous, but also very very crowded these days with climbers and tourists.
We always stopped for lunch at the Pump House. Is it still open? That park is such an unexpected and startling feature in that part of Oregon, where it’s so flat.
My ideal place to camp is slightly different: if I can stay next to a slightly (but not too loudly) babbling brook, I like sparse but medium-to-tall pine trees that give you ample flat space to set up camp and frolic through, but are still majestic specimens of nature.
Even though they’re uglier-than-average in other aspects, I found that volcanic terrain is excellent for this, for instance these places:
I thought that Bryce Canyon would provide the same camping experience since the non-cliff-facing half of the road contains this type of terrain even though it is limestone
, but the actual campground is in the hills. It was still fun to stay at, though, since it was so close to the cliff that it was easy to walk there during dusk and dawn or even in the middle of the night to look at the canyon and then just walk back to my tent.
I can’t go to my landscape. I’ve always been attracted to surrealist art, and one of the hallmarks of artists like de Chirico and Dali are endless horizons which seem timeless through the use of long shadows. They’re dreamlike, but also very vivid. I’d like to walk through one.
The closest I’ve come were days when “golden hour” provided perfect light conditions, just for a few minutes. Unfortunately, not enough time to wander an endless horizon.
I really have an affinity for the Indiana Dunes.. I lived for a while 20 minutes from them. Every day after work I would take my dog and spend a couple of hours either hiking the woods and the dunes or along the shore. At the time, they were absolutely deserted on weekday evenings. Really a special time in my life and I treasure the memories.
The moments where the sun is 90%+ obscured just before a total or almost total eclipse seem similar except that they have very short shadows, which makes it interesting to me due to its rarity compared to a golden hour non-cloudy condition. But they both have darkness with sharp shadows in common.