New Zealand's many distinctive landforms are packed into a small space. Geoff Chapple, author of Te Araroa: The New Zealand Trail, set out on a year-long journey to find out why, and to seek out the shifting forces that shape them. For company, he chose to walk with geologists and the artisans who work the rock. The journey took him back through geology's global history and onward from end to end of New Zealand. Terrain is the result – a lucid, personal and sometimes funny account of New Zealand's most astonishing landscapes. Their stories and revelations are a prompt to look more closely at the ground we walk on.
Geoff Chapple founded Te Araroa, the New Zealand-long walking track that opened in 2011. He is an author, journalist, playwright, occasional musician, and was once the librettist for an opera. He has won prizes for his movie scriptwriting, and his journalism. Chapple's six books include a biography of Rewi Alley, the New Zealander who founded peasant schools in China and took part in China's 1949 revolution. He also wrote, from a protest viewpoint, a people's account of the divisive 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand. In 2003 he won the Environment category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards with his book Te Araroa: The New Zealand Trail. His stage play Hatch was produced by the Auckland Theatre Company and toured New Zealand and Tasmania through 2007–10. Since 2012, when he stepped down from the leadership of Te Araroa, he has returned to journalism and writing.