Bringing a Setting to Life – Don Maass QUOTES FOR WRITERS
Powerfully portrayed settings seem to have a life of their own, but how is that effect achieved? Make your setting a character is a common piece of advice given to fiction writers, yet beyond invoking all five senses when describing the scenery, there’s not a lot of info out there about exactly how to do it.
The trick is not to find a fresh setting or a unique way to portray a familiar place; rather, it is to discover in your setting what is unique for your characters, if not for you.
Don Maass
Picture credit: Quaid Lagan on Unsplash
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BRIDGET WHELAN writer 
I usually write it from the POV of the characters to give it life and have their take on it.
eg,
Lucy grimaced as the rain continued to fall in the relentless, inexorable way which seeks its damp fingers into every fold of clothing, dripping too from the autumnal trees. She was rewarded, however, by a brief shaft of sunlight through the roiling clouds turning the leaves of the birchwood to gold, and the creamy bark of the trees to silver gilt. The golden carpet of dead leaves glowed and briefly the world was touched with glory.
The crack of thunder which accompanied the lightning seemed to shake the wood as the previous golden idyll lit up in lurid starkness, and then darkened back to gloom, with nothing to distract from the smells of wet horse, wet wool, and wet loam combined in a most unpleasant concatenation. Lucy shrugged deeper into her cloak with a muttered word her mother would not have approved.
Yes, that is what I think Don Maass was advising – describe a place from the emotional perspective of your character.