CHAPTER 6The elderly man sat at the picnic table on the knob, one of the lookout areas across the valley of bush-clad land below. It was just after noon on that early March day but already the summer days had gone and the days were beginning to close in with nippy nights here in this high country. It was autumn in New Zealand, something that he still found a curiosity after forty years. His mind went back to the Netherlands where he had spent the first quarter a century of his life.
Henrick opened the sugar bag that he carried his few clothes and personal items in and opened the much-thumbed letter that had been handed onto him at the lower hut before he had migrated up beyond the tourist trampers to the high hut for the summer. With his supples all but gone he was forced to come down and
