A Little Scenery

Not often when reading a novel do I marvel at descriptions of scenery; in fact, more often than not I'm bothered by having to read too much about scenery. But Angle of Repose has drawn me in with scenery descriptions. There is a whole chapter dedicated to the descent into a mine that is really great (but way to long to quote here) and this description of a meadow that left me feeling and seeing tall grass all around me:

She guided her horse through willows and alders and runted birches, leaning and weaving until the brush ended and she broke into the open. She was at the edge of a meadow miles long, not a tree in it except for the wiggling line that marked the course of the Lake Fork. Stirrup-high grass flowed and flawed in the wind, and its motion revealed and hid and revealed again streaks and splashes of flowers--rust of paintbrush, blue of pentstemon, yellow of buttercups, scarlet of gilia, blue-tinged white of columbines. All around, rimming the valley, bare peaks patched with snow looked down from above the scalloped curve of timberline.

All but holding her breath, she pushed into the field of grass. The pony's legs disappeared, his shoulders forced a passage, grass heads and flowers snagged in her stirrup and saddle skirts. The movement around and beneath her was as dizzying as the fast current of the creek had been a moment before. The air was that high blue mountain kind that fizzes in the lungs. Rising in her stirrup to get her face and chest full if it, she gave, as it were, a standing ovation to the rim cut out against the blue. From a thousand places in the grass little gems of unevaporated water winked back at the sun.