The most beautiful place you have been?

Where is the most beautiful place you have ever been?

I've lived a lot of places during my life and visited many places as well but the most beautiful place I have been is where I am now. The rural countryside of NEPA. Hills abound, green and vibrant, forests lush and layered with age. I love it here. We get a great spring, a good snowfall in the winter, and the hills remind me of freedom and childhood.

I've been lucky too and traveled far and wide. Big open spaces such as deserts and towering mountain ranges are always up there but there's something so other-worldly about the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland that is spell-binding. I need to go there again.

Home. The Pacific Northwest is Earth at it's most vibrant and alive. It's the sort of place where you can sit on a mountain top and see all the way from the rainforest to the whale pods off coast. Human settlements have carved a niche out of the wall of green, but the war isn't won. Trees tear up roads in just a few years, and blackberries reclaim entire acres of cleared land every spring. Other places define a forest as 'a gathering of trees'. Around here, it's understood that forest means 'Impassable hardpack of life stretching from the ground to the arbor.'



You might have heard of the High Steel Bridge, built by a logging company in the distant past. It's all that's left of an industrial-scale tree moving operation. Even the 'new-growth' trees are getting old enough to blend in now.

I've been lucky enough to have traveled a fair bit as well, and Machu Picchu is one of the very few places I've been where reality far exceeded expectation. The combination of altitude, mountain scenery, being 'in the clouds' combined with the ancient ruins, and fact that the location is so isolated and inaccessible that it wasn't discovered until 1911, provided a sense of awe-inspiring beauty, peace and tranquility that can't adequately be expressed in words.

Acadia National Park in Maine...in the dead of winter.

It was so freakin' cold! But seeing the snowy mountains and frozen lakes was breath-taking.

Sadly I have yet to be as lucky as others to travel. I've hardly been outside of a three state range from the one I was born in. Unless you count a trip to Orlando Studios when I was 15 and a trip to Niagara Falls when I was 13...I haven't seen anything really. Went to the Jersey Shore every summer until I was 16 and took two trips to Williams Burg VA. Went to visit some friends in NC earlier this summer and went to Pittsburg PA three times for conventions and Baltimore MD 3 times for conventions...Lancaster PA for the Ren Fair two times...other than that I basically live under a rock. Don't have the finances to go anywhere or do much of anything unless I can split it with other people.

I CAN however say...there are MANY places I'd love to see some day before I die. I want to travel cross country, going from east to west coast. I really would love to wander the giant Red Wood Forests and visit the Yellowstone National Park. It's my dream to one day visit the Ice Hotel in both Alaska and the much larger one in Finland I believe it was.

Nature Girl: omg! So jealous! That's one of those places that if someone asked me where I'd like visit, would be at the top of my list.

Trygon: Love it. The way you describe it is truly magical, even without the pic to go with it.

Quix: That's super cool that you got the chance to visit such a gorgeous and captivating place. I don't think a lot of people have.

Aurelius: I don't think I'd like to visit anywhere in the dead of winter, no matter how beautiful, lol! But it sounds like it was quite the experience.

Feral: Actually, it sounds like you've traveled a lot. So, where is the most beautiful place you have been? This isn't about comparisons or exotic adventures, since both Trygon and I find our own homes/locales to be that number 1 spot and we're just on opposite coasts of the USA. I've been to Italy, Germany, and Canada and still, the green hills and temperate forests of PA is my favorite. So, what is your most beautiful spot?

Nature Girl: omg! So jealous! That's one of those places that if someone asked me where I'd like visit, would be at the top of my list.

Oh Rudolph, you've got to visit there! It really is the weirdest, strangest, most atmospheric place I've been. I was lucky enough to visit five years ago and I'm constantly dreaming up schemes in the back of my mind as to how to wangle another London trip so I can fly up to Inverness, rent a car and head straight for Skye. Oh, and you get Loch Ness along the way too! So hoping you get there someday, see the old blackhouses, the Quirang, the Cuillins, Loch Brittle, and what is purported to be the most ancient rock on this planet!

Rudolph Quin said:

Feral: Actually, it sounds like you've traveled a lot. So, where is the most beautiful place you have been? This isn't about comparisons or exotic adventures, since both Trygon and I find our own homes/locales to be that number 1 spot and we're just on opposite coasts of the USA. I've been to Italy, Germany, and Canada and still, the green hills and temperate forests of PA is my favorite. So, what is your most beautiful spot?

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Hmmm I see your point.

I suppose it comes down to the fact I feel I have not essentially been to any place able to hold my imagination for very long. When I personally think of some place that is 'beautiful' I picture something which appears untouched by time and the influence of people. Or, if it HAS been touched by human influence...nature is taking it back and reclaiming the world.

Rolling hills and green meadows are nice, the misty and dew covering them in the morning is relaxing as the shine begins to rise, steam rising off the creeks...its tranquil but...all too often I find the scene spoiled by reminders of modern day life.

While the places I have traveled to are certainly thought provoking well within their own right...to me they have all felt....lack-luster or 'second verse same as the first.' I know the number of people who have been able to visit the Niagara Falls vs the ones who wish they could see them up close is a major difference fore example. But...for me the experience was ruined by how....commercialized this magnificent wonder of nature was. The constant hussle of people and the boats in and out...the turmoil of everything...it was ultimately lost on me because of the human element.

I would have rather visited the Falls centuries ago and seen the entire area as it originally was before humans developed it. When it was endless forest and mountains, wild and untamed.

Each place I have visited has been nice most certainly...but the experiences I had while there I also take into account with how much of an impact the environment had on me. Sadly nearly every convention I have been to always had some major, dumb ass drama blow up that didn't need to happen, thus took away from the experience as a whole and left me with an ever darkening view on not just the event itself but the area as well. The experience became corrupted for me so to speak and thus corrupted how I actually viewed the physical area around me. Where I might not have originally noticed the flaws while having fun I immediately picked up on and that was all I saw once the drama began. Where a once light and sprawling city was able to take my breath away all I saw was how tight it was, cold, hard, dark, dirty...etc. verses the good side of it.

All in all, I suppose what I am basically saying...is that while I did find the places I have been to be pretty and nice...[[if only for a short while]] none of them hit home to me in such a fashion as to warrant a reaction of "This is the most beautiful place I have ever been."