This is a different sort of recc, but nothing gets me wanting to go outside more than Lord of the Rings. Tolkien thought the purpose of fantasy and fairy tales was to “re-enchant” the material world for the reader. He explains it better than I can in this great quote from the essay “On Faery Stories,” which captures exactly the effect LOTR has on my appreciation of nature:
“Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a good craftsman loves his material, and has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood which only the art of making can give. By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.
And actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting. For the story-maker who allows himself to be “free with” Nature can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine.”
