Sitting in the cab of a pickup, waiting to drive up the coast of O‘ahu, I find myself watching a butterfly four feet in front of the windshield. My focus sharpens. The butterfly’s wings are like the iced feuilles of a French pastry—terribly thin slices of tangerine, edged in mocha. They lift and lower, lift and lower, forming two erect parallel planes, then two flat spans. The insect swoops and twitches among clusters of tiny, pansy-shaped blossoms, spears of jade-green leaves, and waxy teardrops of orange berries. I have been looking at this amazing bush of purple, green, and orange every day for a week. But I haven’t seen it.

Our senses are like tender shoots of foliage. They respond to nature, closing down in the cold. And they respond to human nature, curling up in the face of searing criticism, lying in wait when colleagues are wintry, turning to steel under stress. Then, in a place like Hawaii—where I grew up, where I seek creative renewal—they slowly open with light, warmth, the gentleness of tradewinds, and the kindness of old friends.

If the tropics pry open the senses, they humble the writer. It’s one thing to discover the powers of perception, quite another to find powers of description. It can take days for my muscles to let go, longer for my senses to open, and even longer to connect words to images.

Ten days into my most recent trip, and two hours after seeing the butterfly, I hit the Hau‘ula Loop Trail. My hamstrings, my heart, and my breath struggle awkwardly to find a rhythm on the root-strewn hillside. I weave in and out of shade and light, along a corridor of tufting ti plants, past a stand of stately ironwood, into a grove of Cook pines. I crest the hill and raise my eyes. Off to the left, the vertical trunks and horizontal branches of a silk-oak frame the western face of the next ridge, resting in shadow. The late-afternoon sun casts its light on the branches in the foreground—the feathery leaves of the silk-oak shimmer silver, the fronds of a palm arc gold, the lime-green scythes of a koa cut into the sky.

In the background, a hundred greens stitch patterns into the next ridge: the shaggy gray-green of ironwoods, the waxy emerald of African tulips, the dark-teal arrowheads of Cook pines, the olive tufts of wilelaiki, the khaki canopies of eucalyptus.

I am seeing green, as if for the first time.