A couple of years ago, I saw the soul of Hawaii by walking the perimeter of Oahu.

This time, I intend on saving a few steps.

My annual vacation is coming up, so I figure I might spend a week playing the island’s six municipal golf courses on successive days. They aren’t my favorite courses, but every time I walk from the starter’s window to the first tee my prevailing thought is always “lucky you live Hawaii.”

The journey will probably start and end at Kahuku because it is the top course on Oahu by a wide margin, nine holes of pasture golf perfection that makes you feel like you are floating around Scotland with Shivas Irons. The greatest layout between Pebble Beach and Saint Andrews was built in 1937 and doesn’t look like it has changed since the military flattened it to make a runway during World War II. It is definitely the same as it was in 1980 when slack key legend Gabby Pahinui suffered a stroke and died after taking his second shot on No. 2. He parred the previous hole.

Kahuku is a love/hate kind of place, with no carts or clubhouse and the executive bathroom is a portapotty. It is only nine holes and four of them are par 3s, but because of the wind off the ocean you can play all day and use a different club off the tee each time. Nobody knows who designed the masterpiece, which adds to the perfection. It just seems to have just happened the same way that the Hawaii sunset does.

Kahuku was Oahu’s second municipal golf course, built seven years after Ala Wai Golf Course officially opened. They couldn’t be more different, but they do have their similarities.

They sit on prime real estate that makes big thinkers salivate, but yet they survive. Kahuku gets its challenges from developers who dream of another hotel. Ala Wai has been targeted as the site of a public park, convention center and even the State Capitol at different times. But still it remains.

Tee times are still gobbled up as soon as they pop up on the new flawed online reservation system. But once you get on, it is pure fun as long as you don’t mind occasionally waiting a half hour between shots. Ala Wai’s slope rating suggests that it is more difficult than the third muni to hit the island, but I find that hard to believe.

When it was opened in 1953, people said that Pali Golf Course was too difficult and that nobody would play it. It is the hardest for me, with two of the five longest par 3s on the island and inconsistent fairways that will leave you cussing at the many trees. It is the toughest walk and the 15th and 17th greens are impossible to putt with your heart racing from climbing the mountains to the green. Paying $26 for a cart seems like a bargain.

One place you don’t need a cart is Ted Makalena Golf Course in Waipahu. It was built in 1971 and is flatter than Kyrie Irving’s home planet. Makalena always struggles with the grass, but it is unique in that it contains the island’s second-shortest par 3 (No. 17, over the water) and the longest par 4 (the 474-yard eighth).

West Loch came next, when Robin Nelson plopped it down in Ewa Beach in 1990. Nelson is my favorite designer, with pristine Ewa Beach Country Club and Royal Kunia Country Club on his resume. Nelson was a master at making even the shortest holes challenging and West Loch is packed with them. He does his best work on short par 4s but his brilliance is probably best displayed on the 100-yard fifth hole, which is rated as the second easiest hole on the course and being easy is what makes it hard. It is right there in front of you.

Ewa Villages completed the sixsome in 1996 and is my home course, having played it more than any other. The par 73 is the longest (6,455 yards) and hardest (slope of 122) of the munis and for my money the par-5 13th hole is one of the most difficult anywhere. At 562 yards, it is the third-longest par 5 on the island behind Royal Kunia’s ninth (564) and Mid-Pacific Country Club’s third (563). It is so far in my head that in 56 rounds I have parred it only once. Even if I could keep it in the wide fairway, that hole is so far in my head that I have no chance.

The municipal courses on Oahu had their rough and ragged stretches over the years, but this is collectively the best I have seen them play.

Hawaii is different things to different people, but for me if you want to know our island home you could do worse than starting with the city’s golf courses. It beats hiking through Maili at midnight, that’s for sure.