This suspicion—that I had missed Hawaii's best years—was, in truth, the main reason I hadn't gone home in so long. For although I had plenty of easy excuses for not visiting (it was too far from New York, where I now live; there were too many places I had yet to see), the reality was that I feared being disappointed. But I yearned for the islands, and as I traveled to other cities and other countries, I always thought of Hawaii, and Hawaii was always my yardstick: Were the enormous clumps of waxy lipstick-red heliconia in Luang Prabang prettier than the ones that had grown outside my house in Manoa? Was the sea at Trancoso, in Brazil, bluer than the ocean on Oahu's North Shore? Was the succulent-stuffed garden I strolled in Marrakech more impressive than the one I saw in Kauai? I found echoes of my dream Hawaii everywhere I went, except in Hawaii itself.

And so I was back in Hawaii in February, in the year of the islands' fiftieth anniversary of statehood—to see what the place was like now, of course, but also to be reminded of what it could be—and why I had once loved it.

The romance did not begin promisingly.

The first thing many tourists see in Hawaii is concrete—a long dreary stretch of it, through landscapes dominated by sad, cheap apartment buildings and almost entirely denuded of plant life. This is the twenty-five minute drive from Honolulu International Airport to Waikiki, and it is one of the ugliest I know, not to mention the most disappointing—this is Hawaii? It takes a lot to stamp out or obscure the place's natural beauty, yet somehow the state has managed to do it.

By the next morning, however, things looked better. I was staying in a small hotel in Waikiki, a block from the beach. Visitors either avoid Waikiki altogether or never leave it, both of which are mistakes. Yes, the place can appear to be one big eyesore (my hotel sat in the shadow of a glass-and-steel Trump hotel, seemingly abandoned mid-construction like an unloved toy), an outdoor mall in which place of primacy is given to a contingent of the nation's worst fast-food restaurants, their gasps of air-conditioning chilling the sweet, warm air, but Waikiki is also where the fantasy of modern Hawaii was born, the Ellis Island for generations of post-World War II tourists. Each decade has brought a new wave of them to the islands. In the 1940s, it was soldiers; in the 1950s, socialites; in the 1960s, hippies; in the 1970s, surfers; in the 1980s, the Japanese; and in the 1990s, it could feel, everyone. Walking down Kalakaua Avenue, Waikiki's main drag, is proof of that: There are ancient women, sunspotted as leopards, in their Connecticut limes and pinks; and shirtless surfers, their skin so browned and their hair so bronzed that only their green eyes reveal that they're actually Caucasian; and wilting groups of Japanese flapping their palms at their cheeks in a futile effort to cool down. Hawaii's visitors mirror the population of Hawaii itself, which is roughly half Asian and half everything else, the latter group comprised mostly of whites and Pacific Islanders and, in ever-diminishing numbers, native Hawaiians.