America is a world of many worlds, and no lands exemplify that better than the nation's most remote holdings far off in the Pacific. Hawai’i, called "America's most exotic outpost" by Philip Rucker of the Washington Post, may be the country's newest state, but its ground was first explored by some of the world’s oldest populations. Islands this size have a very present relationship with change — I watched molten lava pour into the ocean and form Earth’s newest land a few miles from where we’d celebrate the resilient independence of the indigenous “Kingdom of Hawai’i” at the Kalapana Night Market.

Hawai’i as a world within worlds is more than just metaphor — its eponymous Big Island alone is famous for containing 10 of the world’s 14 unique Köppen climate zones. On just over 4,000 square miles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a microcosm of Earth’s different climates persists. When the whole world can be spanned in a two-hour drive, road-tripping felt like an act of teleportation. In 24 hours, we walked along the white-sand beaches and fell asleep on black sand beaches, hiked across cracking volcanic rock and snorkeled through neighborhood tide pools, at breakfast in the glow of the sun and shared chocolate under the light of the stars.