Follow a river downhill to where it ends and there is a real lake filling its valley to the lowest gap in its rim, with bays, arms up the side valleys and islands, its bed shelving down from the shore. Where a lake spills over, a stream leaves through a notch in the rim and runs on down its valley. From high ground, lakes stay in view on the horizon. The forest has small still ponds too, about one every ten square kilometers, each in its own hollow: dark water that holds the trees, with sedge and rush at the edge.
Walk to any coast. The sea has swell rolling in and surf breaking on the beach, which has a berm, dunes with grass, sand verbena and lupine behind it, dark wet sand at the water’s edge, and seaweed and driftwood along the tide line. At any creek you see its sand and pebbles through the clear shallows, the water darkening where it deepens and white only where it runs fast.
The climate is new too: within a few kilometers of any start you can walk into desert, warm rainforest, oak woodland, chaparral and open grassland. Saved worlds are redrawn with the new land, and you are set down on clear ground near where you saved. Known gaps: the breaking waves do not curl yet, and a few lakes whose ground would make the stream climb have no outlet yet.
