I’m a lifelong if somewhat desultory student of Landscapes at various scales. A couple of delightful books showed up under the Christmas tree, and I’m gleefully anticipating their consumption:

Chet Raymo’s The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe teaches valuable lessons by attending to this bit of landscape

FOR THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS I have walked the same path back and forth each day from my home in the village of North Easton, Massachusetts, to my place of work… Step by step, year by year, the landscape I traversed became deeper, richer, more multidimensional, always overflowing the mind that sought to contain it. Ultimately, almost without my willing it, the path became more than a walk, more than an education, more than a life; it became the Path, a Tao, a thread that ties one human life and the universe together… Any path can become the Path if attended to with care, without preconceptions, informed by knowledge, and open to surprise. (pp 1, 4-5, 6)

Another explores a landscape element that I’ve often thought of documenting myself: William Hubbell’s Good Fences: A Pictorial History of New England’s Stone Walls (see some examples).