When I was a kid I got a ton of mileage out of the relatively few Lego sets I had. These earliest sets show a ton of wear and tear from excessive building and rebuilding.

Since I emerged from the dark ages a couple years ago I've amassed a collection that's maybe 20x larger, and yet I haven't done a lot with them aside from display and archive. I haven't worked up the nerve to break them all down and mix them all together into a brick collection that allows for maximum MOCing. That had left me somewhat frustrated.

What has really reignited my passion for MOCing has been my love of the natural world. I'm a pretty big hiker, camper, backpacker, paddler, wildlife photographer and that has turned into a fascination with making natural scenes (canyons, mountains, river gorges, hiking trails, campgrounds, elaborate foliage, etc.). I've been steadily amassing bricks from PAB, BrickLink, duplicate sets, etc. and developing ever more-elaborate MOCs. I spend an evening or two creating something, admire it for a couple of days, get more bricks, tear it down and do it again. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of these ad-hoc bricks.