30 Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership 2021, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 30–45 https://doi.org/10.18666/JOREL-2021-V13-I4-10633 The Effects of Natural Landscapes on Inspiration: An Exploratory Study Brad Daniel 2nd Nature TREC (Training, Research, Education, Consulting) Jim Shores Asbury University W. Brad Faircloth University of North Carolina-Asheville Abstract e purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the relationship between natural landscapes and inspiration through the lens of topophilia—the affinity people have for certain places or landscape features. Participants were students on a traveling college field course called American Ecosystems. e 2015 course (n=15, 26 days) visited 19 U.S. National Parks, Monuments, and Grasslands. e 2017 course (n=15, 18 days) visited 14 locations. On both courses, students studied the flora, fauna, ecology, climate, geology, landforms, and environmental issues associ- ated with each location. Four factors emerged that encouraged inspiration: 1) vertical landscape features, 2) direct and varied experience of place, 3) overcoming personal challenges provided by the landscapes, 4) novel experiences. Students ranked landscapes as more inspirational if they spent more time there, had opportunity to see and learn about them from a greater number of vantage points, and had more direct and varied experiences within them. KEYWORDS: Topophilia, landscape, inspiration, national park, field course Regular Paper e concept of inspiration, as a construct, has not been explored extensively in the field of outdoor studies. Previous research in the field of psychology has examined inspiration using qualitative (Hart, 1998; Hymer, 1990), quantitative (rash & Elliott, 2003; rash et al., 2010), and mixed-methods (Straume & Vittersø, 2012; rash & Elliott, 2004) approaches. While pre- vious work has shown that nature is among the commonly cited sources of inspiration (e.g., Fredrickson & Anderson, 1999; Hart, 1998), few studies have examined the connection between natural landscapes and inspiration. Natural landscapes have great potential to evoke inspira- tion, and the current study is a response to the call to explore alternative methods of eliciting it (rash et al., 2014).