Part of the creative process in writing comes from personal experience; a writer cannot begin writing without inspiration and an interesting story to tell - hence, a writer must embrace the elements surrounding them in the environment and interpret these in way they can be understood by the reader.
If a writer is unable to go out and draw inspiration from a specific environment - for example, a trip to the Galapagos Islands -, an appropiate alternative would be to search images of this environment on the Internet and interpret said pictures in the form of words - as if the writer were in fact experiencing the moment in flesh and bone.