By WILL NORTH

For The Beachcomber

Lord Kenneth Clark, one of the 20th century’s greatest art historians and critics, once wrote: “There is perhaps nothing else by which people of all kinds are united than by their pleasure in a good view.” It’s a sweet notion, but it’s actually a lot of hooey, to put it politely.

If this were even remotely the case, why would people describe themselves, variously and often passionately, as “mountain people” or “desert people” or “ocean people” or “island people?” The plain fact is that places speak to us differently, as if each of us was, in some mysterious way, preprogrammed to understand their particular language — and not understand others.

For example, I grew up in a neighborhood near the Bronx that no one could call “beautiful.” It was deteriorating at a speed and with an inevitability that were more like terminal cancer than dry rot. But from our little apartment, I had a panoramic view of the majestic Hudson River and, on the opposite shore, the forested basaltic cliffs of the Palisades. And ever since then, my sense of natural beauty has required expanses of water and greenery. In the same way, other people need — the same urgent way they need food or water or oxygen — the big sky of the Northern Plains, or the astringent, juniper-perfumed air of the Southwest desert, or the insistent verticality of the Rockies. So — the unquestionable erudition of Lord Clark notwithstanding — the only really certain thing we can say about the beauty of places is that it is, indeed, “in the eye of the beholder.”

This is the third in a series I’m calling “The Anatomy of Home.” The first two columns explored “Place” and “Shape.” This one examines “Beauty.”

Something we tend to forget is that the whole notion that the natural world could be thought of as “beautiful” is a very recent thing. “Beauty,” to choose a common definition, “is the quality that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction.” Obvious, huh? But until the mid-18th century, the perceptual experience most people had of the natural world was stark terror. No one in his right mind ventured into the wilds to take in the view. The roads — where there were any — were treacherous, the accommodations spotty and often dismal, and the likelihood of being robbed at gunpoint high. Mountains were horrifying, not sublime; bodies of water were dangerous, not scenic. The idea that one would even bother to paint “landscapes” arose only in the late 1600s, with the Dutch painters. Before that, and throughout the Renaissance, landscapes were backgrounds, and highly stylized ones at that, fraught with allegorical meanings but seldom standing for themselves.

All that changed just before the beginning of the 19th century. Suddenly, the countryside was all the rage, and the wilder the scenery, the better. Turner and Constable were painting it; Wordsworth was writing poetry about it. People traveled in search of “picturesque” scenes — and by this they meant, quite literally, landscapes that looked like pictures. There were guidebooks published directing travelers to approved picturesque places. But these settings were not meant to be viewed directly, oh, no. No, you put your back to the view and gazed into your “Claude glass,” a sort of handheld mirror by which the real scene behind you could be transformed — voila! — into a framed landscape picture.

Vashon’s full of “picturesque” scenes, and you don’t need a Claude glass to appreciate them. My own favorite is on Vashon Highway just after the 25 mph sign as you drive south into Burton. At the top of the rise opposite the entrance to the yacht club, there’s a sweeping view over the gleaming masts of Inner Quartermaster Harbor, across the deep green of the Burton peninsula and southeast all the way to Mount Rainier. On any clear day, but especially in late afternoon with the sun low, it’s a guaranteed “Wow.”

At least for me. And that’s the point: Aesthetic appreciation of a place like Vashon is individual. It’s a combination of “Seeing,” by which I mean perceiving through one’s senses; “Understanding,” by which I mean appreciation and knowledge of what one is seeing (as we explored in the last column in this series); and “Feeling,” by which I mean the emotional response we have and the associations from our own experience we bring to the view.

As a child, the only beauty I had available to me was that view across the Hudson to the cliffs beyond. Little wonder, then, that the expanse of glittering water in the harbor, the gentle knob of the peninsula and the mountain in the distance evoke an emotional response in me. It’s perception colored by emotion, emotion shaped by personal history. I can certainly appreciate, intellectually, the limitless expanse of the Northern Great Plains or the arid grandeur of the Grand Canyon, but none of it produces that wave of pleasure and comfort I get every time the ferry from Fauntleroy approaches Vashon dock. It’s a language of beauty I can understand. It’s the language of belonging.

— Will North is the author of more than a dozen books. His latest, “A Long Walk Home,” was chosen one of Reader’s Digest’s “select editions.”