If there is a god, and he has a country, it is surely the south west corner of New Zealand; in the fjordlands, between Riverton and Te Anau. Gently rolling hills, like a pastoral blanket, appliquéd with velvet green patches of dense bush and stuffed, for winter warmth, with the ample fleece of ten thousand sheep quietly grazing, undulate towards the sea. Long lines of black cattle solemnly walk the perimeter of their paddocks, driven, as a group, by a biological clock that only they can hear ticking. Jagged mountains in every shade of blue and black and ombre maroon stand their sentinel watch, as they have done for millennia. Their stern faces unmoved by the advent of man on their shores or the resultant flurry of activity. God’s country home must be set in one of the deep valleys, high above some hidden sound, where he can be the last one in the world to watch the summer sun set.

In his backyard, just above Orepuki, he’s hidden a gemstone beach, where the riches of the interior, quite literally, pour into the sea. The Southern Ocean pounds this coast with relentless fury. Even a calm day sees three solid rows of swells big enough to keep a surfer busy for life. The ocean, in every shade of jade and quartz white roars without ceasing and the streams pouring into it across the beach laugh across the jumble of pebbles that, for the seeing eye, hold treasures untold.

We walked, and looked, and filled our pockets with treasures.

The boys dug out holes for their plastic knights to do battle in and threw chunks of driftwood, adding to the joy of who dogs who shared the beach. There may be rocks that glitter when they’re cut and dust that melts to coins to be found here, but the real treasure of this beach is in the colours. The beach has sand of every colour I can remember seeing: from milky white, to dusky grey, rustic tan bending in long swirls with volcanic black, underlapped with bittersweet orange and a slightly larger grained rock powder the colour of the local green stone.

I lay on my stomach a long while and studied the stones, wondering what, exactly, I should be looking for before I saw them: one tiny feather, maybe an inch and a half long, the wet side stuck in the sand, the dry side fluttering, each piece of down making its own shadow. The smallest piece of yellow-grey sea sponge with a piece of red seaweed stuck to it. An oval of driftwood, half a centimeter thick, wider towards one end, with a worm hole in it, and a piece of greenstone the size of a tiny glass bead stuck in the hole. There were treasures all around me.

I got my new boots wet.

They’re waterproof, but that only goes so far. They weathered three good splashes and a step through the fast running stream, but the wave that crashed in and engulfed my ankles was too much for them. The familiar squish of wet socks and a cupful of water between my toes accompanied me back down the beach as I balanced my rocks in one hand, Hannah’s in the belly of my shirt, someone’s shoes hooked over my thumb and my tea thermos. I’d thought to exchange them for drier footwear, or better yet bare feet, as the children had gravitated to, but the weather was warm and the squish reminded me of childhood ramps along forest streams a world away, so I dropped my load and just kept walking.

The ocean on this beach washes hard against the face of a sedimentary cliff at high tide. I looked up and counted the layers: Green scruff on the very top, hanging on for dear life. Gnarled and hardy trees clinging to the edge with the tenacity of an old woman to the last days of her last summer. Rich brown earth below, fading to an inky black with a tree branch sticking out like a bone a dog has buried, giving way to every shade of cappuccino into cream as the cliff descends. Dark brown mud paints root like patterns on the lighter layers below, where rain has dissolved the upper layers and they’ve meandered their way toward the sea. Cream fades to through many shades of mustard to a deep ochre that seems to have been hand painted in burnt orange along the last of the exposed layer. I can’t help but wonder what art lays beneath, yet to be exposed.

An old Kiwi with a bristling bush of white beard and piercing blue eyes was sitting with the children around their pile of rocks when the colours released me and we wandered back. He pointed out three little chips of something I thought rather ugly, as the valuable bits of our find. I disremember the name he gave it. He told us stories of gem hunters in the area who make their living on this beach and pull a hundred dollars a day, or so, out of the rivers in the form of gold dust, which he smelts for them into ingots. The only jade we found was in the ocean waves. The only sapphire in the endless echo of blue above the saw toothed mountains taking a big bite out of the sky. The only gold in the fading poplar trees. But we didn’t leave empty handed; far from it. Gemstone beach handed us the very best of the treasure of life.