Years ago, I heard the wife of a lighthouse keeper talking on the radio about the weather at Puysegur Point, on the south coast of Fiordland, where she and her husband had been stationed for a time. Six months or so before they arrived there, a fishing boat had gone down in a storm with all hands. One day, as she walked along the black stony beach, something white caught her eye. Bending over, she picked up a single human tooth.

I started tramping as a teenager with the expectation of rain in the hills about two days out of three. So we were always prepared to change plans if confronted by a river in flood. Likewise, conditions on the tops could send us scurrying back below the bush line, as the wind over the ridge crests was sometimes strong enough to throw an adult carrying a heavy pack off their feet.