Abel Tasman · Full edition

Only Two in the Photograph

After the plane left Auckland, I took out my phone.

We had always taken a photograph on the plane when we travelled as a family.

When the children were small, we lifted them into the frame. Later, when they grew taller, it was Katherine and I who had to lean towards them. Four heads crowded onto a small screen. Someone blinked. Someone lost half a face. We passed the phone around, complained, and took another.

This time I raised the phone.

Katherine leaned towards me.

Click.

The screen lit up.

There were only two people in the photograph.

Both children had left home for university.

Outside the window there was nothing but cloud.

Auckland had disappeared.

The plane flew south.

We reached Nelson early.

We were not due in Mārahau until evening, so we drove first to Botanical Hill.

From below, it did not look much of a hill.

Trees. A track disappearing into them.

I looked up and decided it would not take long.

I do this rather often: judge a hill before I have walked it.

“Let’s go and see the centre of New Zealand.”

At the top was a place called the Centre of New Zealand.

Centre: centre. New Zealand: New Zealand.

The words seemed straightforward enough.

The track was less so.

It did not climb directly. It crossed the slope, turned back on itself, crossed again, then turned once more. Left, right, left again. Each time I thought we had nearly gained the top, another stretch of hill appeared above us.

A modest height, walked several times over.

At first Katherine and I climbed side by side.

Then I drifted ahead.

At the next bend I turned around.

She was still on the section below.

She came up slowly and stopped, both hands on her knees, her shoulders moving with each breath.

After a while she straightened.

“Harder than it looks.”

She pushed her hat back.

The trees were thick overhead. Sunlight fell through the leaves in small, broken patches.

When we started again, I walked more slowly.

Higher up, the trees began to thin.

Then, after the last few switchbacks, the sky opened.

There were perhaps a dozen people at the summit.

Some were taking photographs. Others held up their phones and spoke to someone far away. The camera faced them first; then it turned, and Nelson, the harbour and the sea entered the screen.

On the other side, I imagined, were their families.

When the crowd thinned, Katherine crouched beside the marker for the Centre of New Zealand and began to read.

I bent down beside her.

A few lines were enough to prove me wrong.

This was not the geographical centre of the country. In the nineteenth century, the hill had served as an important survey point for Nelson.

This Centre was not the centre I had imagined.

It reminded me of something from more than thirty years ago.

My English was poor then. Once, after assembling a few familiar words and deciding I understood them, I said something deeply embarrassing to a Kiwi teacher. Years later I wrote about it in an essay called The Kiwi Teacher I Could Never Look Straight At Again.

Thirty years had passed. My English had apparently improved.

The habit had not.

Perhaps English was never entirely the problem.

Katherine was still crouched beside the marker.

The sun fell directly on her head.

Among the black hair were a few strands of white.

She was eighteen when I first met her.

Back then she had thick, curly hair that fell to her shoulders.

She finished reading, pressed one hand to her knee and rose slowly.

A few steps farther on, the trees ended.

Nelson lay below us.

Roofs were scattered among the green, then the harbour, then the long curve of the coast.

Beyond it was Tasman Bay.

The water near shore was a bright blue-green. Farther out it deepened. Across the bay, the hills had faded to a thin grey-blue line between sea and sky.

Wind came up the slope and lifted Katherine’s hat.

She held it down with one hand.

The next day we would enter Abel Tasman National Park from somewhere along that coast.

The walk had not begun.

The sea had arrived first.

We came down from Botanical Hill intending to go to South Street.

Then, turning into the centre of Nelson, I saw the cathedral above us.

Its pale tower rose behind the trees and roofs. A long flight of stone steps climbed from Trafalgar Street towards it.

I slowed the car.

“Let’s look at this first.”

We parked and began to climb.

The steps were broad, broken by landings. The cathedral remained above us, appearing and disappearing behind the trees.

On one of the landings we stopped at a plaque.

Thomas Cawthron.

In 1913, it said, he had given these steps to Nelson.

The granite came from a quarry at Tonga Bay.

I knew that name.

Tonga Bay was in the country we were heading for the next day.

I looked down at the pale stone under my shoes.

We had not yet entered Abel Tasman, but some of it was already under our feet.

Higher up stood the cathedral.

A notice by the entrance said the present building had been begun in 1925 and reached its final form only in 1967.

Katherine was already at the door.

She looked inside and went in.

The afternoon outside was bright. From the threshold, the interior was almost black.

Then the rows of wooden pews began to appear.

I stepped across the doorway.

The street receded.

Katherine walked down the centre aisle and sat.

I reached her row, paused, then went several rows farther back.

From there I could see only her back.

Her head was bowed.

The roof rose high above us. Daylight came through coloured glass and reached the walls and pews as muted patches.

Katherine remained there.

I did not know what she was thinking.

After a while she lifted her head, picked up her hat and stood.

When the door opened, daylight returned at once.

She narrowed her eyes, put on her hat and stepped down onto the first stair.

The street came back with her.

South Street was close by.

The first thing that surprised me was its size.

It was tiny.

The street was narrow. Most of the houses were single-storey and sat close to the road. From the middle of the street you could see curtains behind windows, pots on verandahs, grain in the timber weatherboards.

The houses stood close to one another as well.

No large front lawns. No high walls.

The street had kept the scale of another century.

A sign said cottages had begun appearing here in the 1860s. Many of the early residents were tradesmen and their families.

Katherine walked slowly along the edge of the road.

One pale green cottage stood almost beside her. White trim followed the gable down towards a red front door.

She stopped and took two steps back.

“That one’s nice.”

I took out my phone.

She stood by the red door.

Through the camera I noticed curtains in the window and flowerpots beside the entrance.

Farther along it was the same.

A curtain half drawn. A car parked outside. Plants rising past a sill.

These were not emptied heritage houses.

Behind nineteenth-century timber walls there were still kitchens, bedrooms and dinner.

At one point the cottages had nearly given way to redevelopment.

They survived.

The doors were still shut by the people who lived behind them.

The curtains were still theirs to draw.

The stone path was so narrow that two people walking side by side nearly filled it.

A century and a half ago, people must have come through these same small doors and walked down a street of much the same width.

There would simply have been no cars waiting outside.

From South Street we walked back towards the centre.

The cathedral was still above us.

At the foot of the steps stood an old black-and-white building with tall windows and tables outside.

We had only meant to have one beer.

The place was called The Vic.

At the bar, things became complicated.

A line of taps ran in front of us.

IPA. Pale Ale. Lager. Several names I had never heard before.

Katherine and I read them from left to right, then from right to left.

The bartender understood.

“You can taste them first. Any of them.”

I looked at the row again.

“Any of them?”

With my tolerance, if I tried them all I would probably finish the afternoon before choosing a beer.

So we asked him to pick something local and not too strong.

Suitable for two young people in their fifties.

In 1889 the building had been an insurance office. Later it housed lawyers, then council offices.

By the time we sat down, it had become a pub.

Two glasses arrived.

Condensation formed almost immediately.

Katherine lifted hers towards me.

“Cheers for you.”

The rims touched.

“For us.”

By the time we left The Vic, the beer had begun to do its work.

The sun was still high, but we were no longer in a hurry.

On the upper part of Trafalgar Street the cars disappeared.

Tables and planters occupied what had once been roadway. People drank coffee. Others simply sat in the sun.

There were hammocks.

Katherine was already walking towards one.

That saved a discussion.

The fabric dropped as soon as I put my weight into it. I got one leg in, then the other, and spent a while arranging myself into a position that did not seem likely to deposit me on the pavement.

The hammock beside mine had settled much more gracefully.

Katherine was already lying still.

She pulled the brim of her hat down. One leg remained outside.

Above us were trees.

Light moved through the leaves, crossing our faces and clothes as the wind shifted.

The street remained close: footsteps, a cup set down on a table, the occasional bicycle passing slowly.

I learned later that this stretch of Trafalgar Street had been remade precisely to make people linger.

Cars went out. Tables, planters and hammocks came in.

It worked on us.

A little earlier we had been calculating how much afternoon remained.

Now neither of us looked at a watch.

Katherine’s eyes were closed beneath her hat.

I pulled mine lower as well.

Nelson became a small patch of green moving above the brim.

The sun had shifted by the time we left the hammocks.

Queen’s Gardens was nearby.

Water came first.

The path did not cross the garden in a straight line. It followed the edge of a pond, curving with it. Trees leaned towards the water; some branches almost touched the surface.

The pond was older than the garden.

It had once been part of an old bend of the Maitai River. In the late nineteenth century, paths, trees and bridges were arranged around it.

A white wooden bridge crossed the water.

It was narrow and slightly arched.

There was another bridge beneath it.

A few ducks came out of the shadow.

When Katherine approached the bank, they moved towards her, then turned away and swam towards the bridge.

Ripples spread behind them.

The bridge broke apart.

So did the trees.

When the water settled, the bridge slowly returned.

We followed the pond.

The path bent with the water until, beyond a bank of green, a white wall appeared.

Black tiles ran along its top. The corners of the roof lifted slightly. The openings in the wall were patterned rather than glazed; through them you could still see trees on the other side.

Beyond the wall were a pavilion, stones and another piece of water.

We had crossed from a nineteenth-century New Zealand garden into something else.

This was the Huangshi Chinese Garden.

It was built here in 2007.

Some of the roof tiles and architectural elements came from China. The stone came from the South Island.

The two had been placed in one garden.

Huangshi is in Hubei.

Hubei is where Katherine comes from.

She had walked ahead.

Beside the trees was a low stone.

She passed it, then stepped back.

Four red Chinese characters had been cut into its face:

中国黄石公园

Huangshi Park, China.

Katherine stood looking at them.

After a while she moved beside the stone and turned towards me.

I raised the phone.

In the frame she was standing in the South Island of New Zealand.

Behind her were white walls, black tiles and Chinese characters.

I pressed the button.

Click.

The screen lit up.

This time there was only one person in the photograph.

Across the pond, the ducks had already moved away.

Wind passed over the water.

The reflection of the white bridge trembled for a while, then became still.

We left Queen’s Gardens and drove towards Mārahau.

The houses thinned.

Every now and then, Tasman Bay appeared through the roadside—the same water we had seen from Botanical Hill that afternoon.

Ahead was Abel Tasman.

There was still daylight left.

The Tractor Pulled the Boat into the Sea

“Three-thirty. Anchorage.”

“Don’t miss it. Otherwise you’ll have to walk back.”

The skipper said it from the boat, already backing away from Bark Bay.

That morning at Mārahau, we were already wearing lifejackets and sitting in the water taxi.

My pack was at my feet.

The boat was nowhere near the water.

In front of us stood a tractor.

Its engine started and the whole boat began to move, trailer and all, along the road. We passed houses, parked cars and patches of grass. Looking only at the passengers, we appeared ready for sea. Looking over the side, we were still travelling through a village.

It was our first Great Walk.

We had chosen not to carry several days of gear or sleep in huts. Each morning we would take a water taxi into the national park, walk south for the day, and catch another boat back to Mārahau in the afternoon.

Day one was Bark Bay to Anchorage.

I looked down at myself: long trousers, jacket, walking shoes.

Around us were shorts, T-shirts and small daypacks.

Inside my pack was a thermos.

It contained hot water.

The tractor kept going.

The asphalt ended. The wheels rolled onto wet, shining sand.

At low tide, the sea at Mārahau retreats a long way from the road. The tractor simply followed it.

At first there was only a skin of water over the sand. Then the water climbed the tyres.

The tractor stopped.

Its diesel engine was still running when the outboard behind us came to life. The hull shifted. The trailer slipped away beneath us.

The sea took the weight.

There was no road ahead.

Once the water taxi gathered speed, wind came hard across both sides.

Headland after headland passed.

Forest ran down the slopes almost to the rocks. Around one point, a strip of golden beach appeared below the trees; around the next, it vanished, replaced by blue-green water against the shore.

Some bays had no houses.

No road.

From the sea, it was difficult to tell whether anything existed behind the forest at all.

Now and then a piece of track showed between the trees and disappeared almost at once.

The water changed constantly: dark blue offshore, clear green over the shallows.

At Bark Bay, the boat nosed into the beach.

We stepped down into the sand. My pack was handed after me.

The skipper stayed aboard.

He pointed south.

“Three-thirty. Anchorage.”

I nodded.

The boat turned away. The sound of the engine diminished across the bay.

At the edge of the forest, a sign pointed north to Awaroa and south to Anchorage.

I took out my phone, checked the time, and put it back in my pocket.

We went south.

At Rākauroa / Torrent Bay, the route changes with the tide.

At low water, walkers can cross the estuary. When the tide is wrong, the track climbs away from it and goes around.

That day, the short way belonged to the sea.

We took the all-tide track.

The path entered coastal forest almost immediately. Ferns leaned out from the slope, some close enough to brush a shoulder.

The sea did not remain beside us.

For long stretches there was only forest, hillside and the track underfoot. Then a bend would open, and the water would flash below again.

A kayak moved across one patch of blue-green sea.

Two people sat in it, no larger than dots.

A few steps later the trees closed and they were gone.

Falls River lay across the track.

A long suspension bridge hung between the forested banks.

A sign at the entrance said:

Maximum 10 people.

The bridge moved beneath each step.

Below, the river was dark under the trees. It was hard to see the bottom.

I stopped near the middle.

My hand went into my pocket.

The phone lit up.

I checked the time, switched the screen off, and kept walking.

Beyond the bridge, the path returned to the trees.

This coast does not run in a straight line. Bays cut deep into the land, and the track has to work around them: into a gully, up a slope, around a shoulder, then down again.

The sea appeared.

The sea vanished.

After several more ridges, Torrent Bay suddenly opened below us.

I stopped.

All morning the sea had appeared in fragments. Here it was spread out at once.

A pale sandbar lay across the bay. The water close to shore was almost green; farther out it deepened into blue. A few houses stood near the tidal flats. Boats rested close to the waterline.

From above, everything looked small.

I took out my phone.

A photograph.

A few steps sideways.

Another.

No angle seemed large enough for the whole bay.

“Can we stop for some water?”

Katherine’s voice came from behind me.

I turned.

She stood at the edge of the track with both hands on her knees. Her shoulders rose and fell with her breathing.

The phone went back into my pocket.

We sat beside the track.

I took the water and thermos from my pack. Katherine unscrewed her bottle and drank slowly. I poured some hot water.

It was still warm.

Below us lay the tidal flat we could have crossed at low tide.

After a while Katherine tightened the lid on her bottle, put both hands on her knees and pushed herself upright.

I shouldered the pack.

Within a few minutes the trees had hidden the bay again.

After that, the phone came out more often.

A stretch of track.

The screen.

Another climb.

The screen again.

At one point the sea appeared through the trees.

This time I did not take a photograph.

The phone lit up only long enough to show the numbers.

Katherine’s stride became shorter. On the climbs she sometimes pressed a hand against her thigh. At the bends she would stop, wait for her breathing to settle, then start again.

I began stopping at the bends ahead.

When she reached me, we turned into the next climb together.

Earlier in the day we had talked about visiting a waterfall.

A sign for the side track came up.

I checked the phone.

Katherine was already continuing along the main track.

The phone went back into my pocket.

So did the waterfall.

Near the end, more light began to appear between the trees.

Then sand.

Then sea.

We came out of the forest and Anchorage lay in front of us.

I took out my phone.

3:15 pm.

There was no boat.

I put my pack down on the sand.

Katherine found a piece of driftwood and sat. She took off one shoe and turned it upside down.

Several small stones dropped out.

She shook it.

A few more followed.

I sat beside her and stretched my legs.

Fifteen minutes.

In the forest, fifteen minutes had felt far too small.

On the beach, it suddenly seemed generous.

At three-thirty, a small shape appeared on the water.

It grew larger.

The water taxi had arrived.

Later that evening, my phone showed two numbers from the day:

15.94 kilometres.

25,048 steps.

Back in Mārahau, I stopped checking the time.

We had dinner at Hooked.

Only a road separated our table from the shore.

That morning the tractor had driven across the same ground towards the water. Now the tide had gone far out, leaving a broad sheet of wet sand marked by shallow channels.

Katherine ordered a local wine.

I had a beer.

She ate for a while with her head down.

“How are you?”

She looked up.

“Okay.”

Then back to her plate.

A little later she slowly stretched both legs beneath the table.

“My thighs are so sore.”

By the time the glasses were half empty, the light was fading.

Katherine turned towards the tidal flats.

“I don’t know if I can walk tomorrow.”

The sky beyond the table had begun to change colour.

A pink moon rose above Mārahau.

Where the tractor had driven that morning, there was now only the wide, empty shore.

Neither glass was finished.

Tomorrow could wait until tomorrow.

There Was a Café Behind the Trees

I took off my clothes and walked slowly into the clear water.

At Bark Bay it rose from my ankles to my knees, then to my chest.

The water was cold.

A few hours earlier, we had been back in Mārahau.

Katherine got out of bed, walked across the room and pressed a hand against her thigh.

“I don’t know if I can finish today.”

The water taxi left Mārahau as usual, but instead of heading north, the skipper turned the boat the other way.

I looked ahead, then back towards the village.

For a moment I wondered whether we were going in the wrong direction.

A large granite boulder appeared offshore.

As we came closer, the split became visible.

Toka Ngawhā — Split Apple Rock.

The skipper eased the throttle. Phones rose around the boat almost at once.

The two halves stood in the water with a narrow gap between them, as though one solid block had been cut cleanly down the middle.

I took a photograph.

Then the skipper turned the boat around.

Awaroa was north.

The taxi gathered speed along the coast. The hills and bays we had walked through the day before passed beside us. Forest came down almost to the water. A strip of golden sand would appear beyond a headland, then slip behind us.

Yesterday we had been somewhere inside those trees.

Today the whole green coast moved past at once.

The boat put us ashore at Awaroa.

I shouldered the pack and we walked inland.

There was no road.

A boardwalk left the sand and disappeared into the trees. Soft beach gave way to timber underfoot. The ground on either side was low and damp, crowded with ferns, scrub and wet grass.

Within minutes the sea was gone.

The boardwalk turned deeper into the shade.

First came the corner of a roof.

Then tables.

Chairs.

Umbrellas.

Someone was drinking coffee.

I stopped.

This was Awaroa Lodge.

No road came in here. People arrived by boat or on foot. The sea had vanished behind the trees, and the buildings were hidden among them.

I had expected the walking to begin as soon as we stepped off the boat.

Instead, the forest gave us coffee.

Katherine had already found a table.

I put the pack beside my chair.

When the coffee came, she held the cup in both hands and took a drink. The faint line between her eyebrows began to ease.

We stayed where we were.

There were no engines, no traffic. Occasionally a walker appeared from the track with a large pack and left it against a table leg. Someone in sandals came out of the lodge carrying another coffee.

When her cup was empty, Katherine pushed herself up from the chair and moved one leg, then the other.

“Let’s go.”

I put the pack back on.

A short distance down the track, the tables and roof disappeared behind the trees.

South of Awaroa, the track climbed towards Tonga Saddle.

The sea vanished quickly.

The path followed the slope beneath a closed canopy. Roots crossed the dirt. Ferns hung down the hillside. Patches of sunlight reached the track and were gone almost as soon as we passed through them.

I reached the first bend and stopped.

Katherine was still below.

When she came level with me, I turned into the next climb.

At the following bend she was only a few steps behind.

Beyond the saddle, the track began to descend.

The air grew cooler.

The land flattened.

Water coming down from higher ground no longer stayed in one channel. It spread through the low country in shallow threads. A boardwalk carried the track over wet ground towards Richardson Stream.

Katherine walked to the middle of the bridge and stopped.

Both hands rested on the railing.

Below her, water wound between grass and reeds. Farther away, the wetland opened and the colour gradually became that of the sea.

Wind came up from the water and lifted the hair beneath her hat.

My hand touched the phone in my pocket.

I left it there.

Katherine kept looking.

After a while she turned around.

Only then did I take the phone out.

Beyond the bridge, the trees withdrew.

Onetahuti Bay opened in front of us.

Pale sand curved a long way around the bay. Behind it lay the wetland and forest we had just crossed. In front was blue-green water, with Tonga Island farther offshore.

Timber ended.

Sand began.

The ground softened under our shoes.

Small waves pushed a thin sheet of water over the beach, then withdrew, leaving the sky on the wet sand.

Katherine walked close to the water.

After a while she stopped and took out her phone.

I had gone a few steps ahead.

I came back.

She was still pointing it towards the sea.

I stood beside her.

We walked south along the beach.

The wetland behind us grew smaller. The hillside ahead drew closer. At the southern end of the bay, the sand narrowed and the track moved back towards the foot of the slope.

Then the forest broke.

A patch of ground appeared that looked unlike anything around it.

No dense fern cover.

Grey-white stone lay exposed, some of it showing flat, cut faces.

This was Tonga Quarry.

Two days earlier, below Christ Church Cathedral in Nelson, we had climbed a long flight of pale granite steps.

Some of that stone had come from here.

The track crossed the edge of the old quarry.

A few minutes later the exposed rock had disappeared behind forest again.

South of the quarry, the track climbed into mānuka.

The hillside shut out the sea.

Katherine’s stride shortened again on the ascent. At each bend I stopped ahead. She came up, looked at the next piece of slope, and continued.

Once, the sea reappeared through the trees.

Katherine stopped.

Her arms hung at her sides.

Below us, branches divided the water into several pieces of blue.

We stood there for a while.

Then the forest took us back.

After the final descent, Bark Bay began to appear below.

First the estuary.

Shallow channels curved across broad pale flats. Wetland, driftwood and forest all met inside the bay.

Farther down, the beach itself came into view.

We had started from here the day before.

On the sand I put down my pack and checked my phone.

There was time.

The bay was quiet.

Forested headlands reached out on both sides, holding the water between them. Several yachts sat offshore with scarcely any movement.

Close to the beach the water was clear enough to see every line in the sand beneath it.

I stood at the edge.

Tomorrow we would move on. I had no idea when I might stand here again.

I raised my phone towards the bay and held it there for a moment.

Then I put it back in the pack.

I took off my clothes and left my shoes on the sand.

Then I walked into the water.

At Bark Bay it rose from my ankles to my knees, then to my chest.

The water was cold.

I stopped.

Then kept going.

The bay was shallow. I walked farther before it was deep enough to swim.

I leaned forward and let the water take my weight.

For a moment there was no ground beneath me.

I swam out a little way and turned back.

Katherine was still on the beach.

She was holding the phone up.

I swam towards her.

When my feet found the sand again, I stood. On the walk back to shore the water dropped from my chest to my knees, then to my ankles.

I dried myself and got dressed.

The water taxi had not arrived.

Later, my phone held two numbers from the day:

12.02 kilometres.

15,493 steps.

That evening we ate at Park Cafe.

It was different from Hooked the night before. There was no broad tidal flat beyond the road. Timber walls, screens and scattered tables sat among the trees, as though the place had grown out of Mārahau rather than been placed there.

The young man serving us was from Christchurch.

He had not planned to stay.

Then he met a local woman.

So he stayed.

“Summer’s busy,” he said.

In winter the visitors thinned out, and the work did too.

He said this with a stack of plates in his hands.

Then he went to the next table.

Our food arrived.

Katherine took a bite.

Chewed.

Looked up at me and raised one thumb.

Her glass gradually emptied.

She pushed it forward.

“Another one.”

A Bird on the Bridge

I put my fist beside the burger.

Measured them.

The fist lost.

That morning we left the car outside Park Cafe in Mārahau.

For the previous two days, a water taxi had taken us north into the park and we had walked south. This time we had a flight from Nelson that afternoon, so there was no boat. We would walk north from Mārahau, turn around when we had had enough, and come back the same way.

No skipper.

No three-thirty.

At the entrance to the track stood a Māori carving.

He was tall, the face cut deeply into the wood, one hand holding a weapon.

I stood beside him.

He had his weapon.

I held my phone against my chest.

That was mine.

Katherine took the photograph.

Beyond the carving lay the Mārahau estuary.

A long bridge ran out from the wetland. Metal grating underfoot. Sun-bleached timber rails on either side.

The tide was out.

Pale sand spread across the estuary, cut by narrow channels of water. Low wetland plants lay close to the edges. Farther away, everything opened again towards the sea.

Halfway across, Katherine stopped.

A black bird stood on the rail.

It opened both wings.

The feathers spread in layers into the wind.

Someone walked past.

The bird did not move.

After a while it folded its wings again, its claws still fixed to the timber.

Katherine went closer.

The bird turned its head.

Below, shallow water moved slowly across the sand.

At the far end of the bridge stood the track sign.

Porters Beach.

Tinline Bay.

Apple Tree Bay.

Katherine read it and kept walking.

Mārahau did not disappear at once.

Behind us were open flats, shallow channels and wetland. Ahead, the forest gradually closed around the track.

The climb was easy.

Tree ferns leaned over the slope, some high enough to arch above the path.

In places the ground changed to pale hard earth and exposed rock. Dense green remained on both sides, but ahead the trees suddenly stopped.

The sea appeared all at once.

Then the track turned back into forest and the water vanished.

Around the next headland it returned.

Below was a small bay. Sand mixed with round stones, broken shell and dark weed left by the tide. The waterline curled around the shore.

The trees closed again.

Another low rise.

Another bay.

Porters Beach.

Tinline Bay.

At one point the tree ferns were particularly tall.

Katherine stopped and looked up.

I had gone several steps ahead and came back.

She stood with her face tilted upwards. Long fern fronds hung above her; beyond them was a solid patch of blue sea.

When she lowered her head, we moved on.

Around the next point, the water opened wider.

Apple Tree Bay.

Apple Tree Bay held two kinds of water.

Outside was the sea.

Inside, a shallow lagoon.

At low tide the lagoon was almost still. Hills and cloud sat in the surface, disturbed only when a little wind crossed it. Pale sandbars and brown wetland plants divided the water into irregular shapes. Narrow channels ran between them towards the open bay.

We followed the edge.

On the seaward side, the water widened again.

Driftwood lay scattered across the beach. Some of the bleached branches had been propped together into something like a shelter without roof or walls.

Katherine stayed near the wood for a long time.

Sometimes standing.

Sometimes sitting.

At one point she leaned against a half-buried log, pushed up the brim of her hat, rested her chin in both hands and looked at the sky.

The cloud was low and thick.

Blue showed through the gaps.

I took a photograph.

Later she stood by the larger pile of driftwood with her arms folded. Wind came off the sea and pressed the hood of her jacket against her back.

We took out some food.

There were not many people on the beach.

A little farther away, an older Kiwi man took off his shirt and left his shoes on the sand.

He walked slowly into the water.

It rose to his calves, then his waist.

He stopped.

Then went farther.

A few more steps and he leaned forward and began to swim.

Katherine watched while she ate.

The man swam out, turned slowly, and came back.

No one on the beach paid him much attention.

Small waves kept folding onto the sand.

After eating, I walked farther along the bay.

The northbound track disappeared into the trees at the far end of the beach.

I stood there for a while.

When I returned, Katherine was still sitting on the driftwood.

I packed the food away and closed the zip.

“Back?”

She pulled down the brim of her hat and stood.

We turned south.

The return was the same track.

The bays that had appeared one after another now slipped away behind us. The tree ferns still hung over the slope. The sea appeared through gaps on the other side.

Farther south, the Mārahau estuary began to return.

At first only a pale patch through the trees.

After another headland, more sand.

Then the channels.

Finally the long bridge.

The bird was gone.

I stopped where it had stood.

The timber rail was warm and pale in the sun.

Below, water still moved slowly through the sand left by the tide.

Beyond the bridge was the car park.

My phone showed:

15.03 kilometres.

Katherine stayed at Park Cafe.

I was still thinking about Fat Tui across the road.

For two days people had been telling me about the burgers.

When mine arrived, I stared at it.

Bread, meat, vegetables and sauce rose in layers high enough to make the first bite a practical problem.

I put my fist beside it.

Measured them.

The fist lost.

I took a photograph.

The burger deserved evidence.

Afterwards I went back to Park Cafe.

Katherine had nearly finished too.

We collected our things and drove to Nelson.

Before going to the airport, I checked the record from the three days one last time.

42.99 kilometres.

61,485 steps.

I switched off the phone.

After the plane left Nelson, Tasman Bay appeared below the window again.

The coast, the forest and those small bays slipped slowly behind the wing.