Why Some Natural Landscapes Feel Beautiful and Unsettling at the Same Time

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A fog-covered forest, an empty desert at dusk, a vast mountain valley or a dark ocean can produce two apparently contradictory reactions: I want to keep looking and I am not sure I want to be here.

That tension is more than a poetic response to scenery. Research in environmental psychology suggests that the way people respond to landscapes is influenced not only by whether a place looks attractive, but also by how easily they can understand it, see through it, navigate it and assess potential threats. Some of the qualities that make a landscape visually compelling mystery, depth, concealment and vastness can also make it feel less predictable.

This helps explain why a landscape can be beautiful without feeling entirely comfortable. The same visual features can invite exploration while simultaneously reminding us that we do not have complete control over the environment.

Beauty and unease can come from the same features

People do not experience landscapes as collections of colors, shapes and physical objects alone. Environmental-psychology research has long examined how characteristics such as openness, coherence, complexity, mystery and refuge influence environmental preference.

Research by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan and colleagues found that features related to coherence, mystery and the presence of nature can contribute to landscape preference. In other research, openness and smoothness were also important predictors of preference.

But mystery introduces an important complication.

A landscape that reveals everything immediately can be easy to understand but visually unremarkable. A winding trail disappearing behind trees, a valley partly hidden by mist or a rock formation whose full shape is concealed can create a reason to keep looking.

Mystery therefore has a dual character. It can increase curiosity while also increasing uncertainty.

Research by Thomas Herzog and Edward Miller found that mystery could predict both environmental preference and perceived danger. Their findings are particularly useful for understanding the strange emotional mixture produced by certain landscapes: the feature that makes an environment intriguing does not necessarily make it feel safe.

The landscape problem: seeing enough, but not everything

One influential explanation comes from prospect-refuge theory, associated with geographer Jay Appleton.

In simple terms, prospect refers to the ability to see and survey the surrounding environment, while refuge refers to places that provide concealment or shelter. The theory proposes that environments offering useful combinations of these characteristics can be attractive because they provide opportunities to observe surroundings while also offering protection.

This provides a useful way to understand why an open meadow may feel very different from a dense forest.

From an open hillside, a person can see a considerable distance. The visual field is broad and obstacles are relatively easy to identify. In dense vegetation, the opposite can happen: the landscape may contain many places where something could be hidden, while the observer’s own ability to see ahead is reduced.

That does not mean a forest is inherently dangerous. It means that perceived safety can change with the structure of the environment.

Studies have found that simulated natural environments with greater visibility and fewer hiding places were generally perceived as less dangerous and less fearful than environments with lower visibility and more opportunities for concealment.

The result is an important distinction: people are not necessarily reacting to an actual threat. They may be reacting to uncertainty about what the environment contains.

Why the most mysterious landscapes can be the most memorable

Consider a familiar landscape transformed by fog.

The mountains, trees or buildings may still be physically present, but their boundaries become harder to read. Distance becomes ambiguous. Objects appear and disappear. The environment offers less information than usual.

That loss of information can make the scene more mysterious.

Environmental-preference research has repeatedly considered mystery as a meaningful component of how people evaluate places. Earlier Kaplan research found mystery to be an important predictor of preference in some landscape settings, while later work showed that mystery can also be associated with perceptions of danger.

This apparent contradiction is central to the experience.

A landscape can essentially say: there is more here than you can currently see.

For some people, that is an invitation.

For others, it is a warning.

Often, it is both.

The role of awe: when beauty becomes overwhelming

Another part of the explanation is awe.

Awe is commonly associated with experiences involving vastness and a need to adjust one’s existing mental framework to accommodate what is being experienced. Contemporary research describes awe as a complex emotion rather than simply a pleasant feeling. A 2024 review in Nature Reviews Psychology notes that research on awe involves complexities surrounding its effects on the self, cognition, motivation, social behavior and well-being.

Importantly, awe does not have to be entirely positive.

Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examined what researchers described as a threat-based form of awe. The work explored how vast, complex stimuli associated with threat can produce an experience that differs from purely pleasant awe.

That helps explain why enormous landscapes can sometimes feel almost frightening even when they are visually spectacular.

A person standing beside a huge canyon, beneath an enormous mountain wall or on an exposed coastline may experience a temporary change in psychological scale. The landscape appears larger, older and more powerful than the individual.

The reaction does not necessarily mean the person believes something bad is about to happen.

It can simply mean the environment feels bigger than the mental categories normally used to understand everyday surroundings.

Why emptiness can feel beautiful and slightly wrong

Vast empty landscapes create a different version of the same tension.

A desert plain, frozen lake, salt flat or remote mountain basin may offer exceptional visual openness. There are few structures, few people and relatively little visual clutter.

That openness can be calming.

But extreme emptiness can also remove familiar signals of human presence and activity. There may be no nearby building, road, crowd or obvious reference point. The environment becomes difficult to compare with ordinary experience.

This is one reason an apparently peaceful landscape can acquire an eerie quality in photographs or films.

The emotional response is not necessarily caused by the landscape being objectively dangerous. Instead, the absence of familiar cues can make the environment harder to interpret.

This distinction matters. Eeriness is an experience, not a reliable measurement of danger.

A beautiful isolated valley may feel unsettling without presenting an immediate threat, while a visually ordinary environment may contain genuine hazards that are not obvious from appearance alone.

Natural does not automatically mean psychologically restorative

There is also an important correction to the popular idea that every encounter with nature is automatically relaxing.

Research has found that natural environments can differ substantially in their restorative effects.

A study published in Health & Place compared natural settings with different levels of prospect and refuge and found that environments with high prospect and lower refuge were associated with greater restoration, while environments with low prospect and high refuge could produce more stress and attention demands. The researchers specifically discussed situations such as dense woodland, where people may worry about becoming lost or need to concentrate more carefully on navigation.

This does not overturn the broader evidence that exposure to nature can be beneficial.

It adds an important qualification:

Nature is not a single psychological category.

A broad coastal view, a dense forest, a narrow canyon and an exposed mountain ridge can all be described as “nature,” while producing very different emotional experiences.

The physical structure of the environment matters.

So do the person’s expectations, familiarity, experience and circumstances.

Why the same landscape can attract one person and repel another

There is no universal emotional response to a landscape.

A seasoned hiker may interpret a dense forest differently from someone who rarely spends time outdoors. Someone familiar with desert environments may find an apparently empty landscape peaceful, while another visitor may find the lack of landmarks disorienting.

Cultural background, previous experience and individual expectations can also influence environmental perception.

This is one reason theories such as prospect-refuge should not be treated as complete explanations of human landscape preference. A meta-analysis of research related to prospect-refuge theory found evidence supporting some aspects of the framework but also substantial neutral and contrary findings, concluding that the available evidence was not sufficient to emphatically establish the theory in all contexts.

That limitation is important.

There is no single psychological switch that turns a landscape from beautiful to frightening.

Instead, multiple processes appear to interact: visual openness, mystery, perceived safety, familiarity, accessibility, expectations and the emotional meaning attached to the setting.

The strange appeal of landscapes that do not reveal everything

Perhaps the most interesting conclusion is that beauty and unease should not always be treated as opposites.

A landscape can become compelling precisely because it leaves something unresolved.

A completely predictable environment gives the mind little reason to investigate. A completely threatening environment may encourage avoidance. But a landscape that is attractive while retaining some uncertainty occupies a psychologically interesting middle ground.

You can look at it.

You can imagine what lies beyond the visible boundary.

You can feel curious.

And you can remain slightly unsure.

That combination may be one reason photographs of misty forests, remote mountains, empty coastlines and enormous skies can remain visually powerful even when they carry an unmistakable sense of isolation.

The unsettling element does not necessarily destroy beauty.

Sometimes it is part of what makes the beauty difficult to forget.

What this tells us about how humans experience nature

The deeper lesson is that people do not simply see landscapes. They interpret them.

A mountain is physical rock and elevation, but psychologically it can also represent scale, difficulty, shelter, exposure or awe. A forest is vegetation, but it can also represent mystery, concealment, navigation and discovery. A vast empty plain is open space, but it can also create feelings of freedom or vulnerability.

The environment provides information.

The mind evaluates that information.

Emotion emerges from the interaction.

This is why calling a landscape “beautiful” does not necessarily mean calling it comfortable. A scene can be attractive because it is orderly and familiar, or because it is mysterious and difficult to fully comprehend. Those are very different forms of beauty.

And when mystery meets uncertainty, beauty can acquire an edge.

Conclusion

Some of the world’s most captivating landscapes occupy an emotional boundary between invitation and warning.

Their openness can make us feel free while exposing how small we are. Their mystery can encourage exploration while making the unseen feel significant. Their vastness can inspire awe while challenging our sense of control.

Environmental psychology does not provide one universal explanation for this experience, and the evidence around theories such as prospect-refuge is more nuanced than a simple evolutionary story suggests. But research consistently points toward an important idea: the way a landscape is structured influences not only how attractive it appears, but also how safe, understandable and psychologically demanding it feels.

That may be why the landscapes people remember most vividly are not always the ones that feel completely comfortable.

Sometimes beauty becomes more powerful when the mind cannot quite decide whether it is looking at a place to enter or a place to approach carefully.