Blue lake and distant mountains
Landscape,  Lens-Artists,  Themed galleries

Gallery: I want to meet you in the big sky country

For the keen traveller, what makes a place special? Sometimes it’s the place itself, a beautiful landscape that captures the heart. Sometimes it’s the people, making you feel comfortable and welcome. Or maybe it’s all about the activities, whether you’re into bird-watching or gallery hopping, an adrenaline-junkie or culture buff.


Like hallelujah in the big sky country

Just like forever and ever is wide

Chris Whitley

This week’s Lens Artists challenges guest host, Karina of Murtagh’s Meadow, asks us to share ‘places that are or were special’ to us, and I confess I struggled for a while in putting together this response. That’s partly because I have already shared my special places in previous blog posts. My home city of London; my ‘second home’, Newcastle; and my special memories of Paris. And partly because I realised, when I look further afield at all the places I’ve been privileged to visit, I don’t actually have a single special one.

But one thing that ties together many of the places that have most lifted my heart is a sense of openness. Despite being a city girl and loving to live in a city, when I travel I’m drawn most to big skies and vast landscapes, wide expanses of ocean or land. So here are just a few of such ‘big sky’ places that have felt very special to me.

The Atacama Desert, Chile
Barren landscape with distant mountains

View from the Mirador de Kari just before sunset

Blue lake in a desert landscape

Laguna Miscanti


Oman
Sand dunes with distant white jeep

Entering Wahiba Sands

Mountainous landscape with a track running through it

The view from Sharaf al Alamayn


New Mexico, USA
Rocks and a dead tree

In Bandelier National Monument

Vista of wooded hills

At the top of Emory Pass

Panorama of a dry landscape

The view from Capulin Volcano

Panorama with rocky outcrops and scrubland

A storm approaching Sandstone Bluffs in El Malpais National Park


Wyoming, USA
Autumn trees and distant mountains

Looking out from Jackson Lake Lodge in the Grand Teton National Park, late afternoon

Looking through trees at a dry hilly landscape

View of the Big Horn area near Sheridan


Washington State, USA
Mountain view with grassy meadows in foreground

On Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Peninsula

Still lake reflecting the sky

Early morning by Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula


And more
Sunset over water seen from a boat

An evening mokoro ride in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

Distant blue mountains

The view from Mount Paektu, North Korea

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