Both an inspiration to walk - or dream of walking - and a memento if you have walked them already, Classic Walks of New Zealand, by Craig Potton, has been revised and updated.
This extract is from the new edition illustrated with Potton's magnificent photographs and bird's-eye maps by Geographx.
Despite the dusty road that splits the huge Te Urewera wilderness, there remains a sense of other-worldliness about Te Urewera National Park.
In this largest of all the fragments of North Island forest, the author Katherine Mansfield also sensed a mood when she wrote "it is all so gigantic and tragic - and even in the bright sunlight it is so passionately secret".
The Tuhoe and neighbouring iwi, who lived in these ranges for hundreds of years before Pakeha came, discovered its hallowed places and secrets, and named its rivers, lakes, forests and mountain ranges.
So powerfully does the land speak, that Tuhoe trace their ancestry to the coupling of the mist maiden Hinepukoho-rangi, and the mountain Te Maunga, a myth from which comes the name "Children of the Mist", as Tuhoe are also known.
Tuhoe alone can recount these mysteries should you wish to discover more about them, though glimpses of their relationship with the land are revealed in Elsdon Best's monographs on the Tuhoe and Judith Binney's works on Tuhoe prophets Rua Kenana and Te Kooti.
But better still, if chance or grace allows it, speak directly to and learn from the Tuhoe, who still live near the sacred centres of their land.
No matter from where our myths and unconscious calls emanate, Lake Waikaremoana and Te Urewera's forests have a deep resonance for all who go to them.
Many now make the journey around Lake Waikaremoana, which from on high appears gangly and long-fingered, an aquamarine starfish held by an enveloping clasp of forest.
The popular myth describing the lake's creation tells the tragic story of Haumapuhia, a woman whose defiance towards her father so angered him that he decided to drown her.
Struggling desperately against her father, she called for mercy from the Gods.
They transformed her into a taniwha, and she desperately thrashed through the land, gouging the enclosing hillsides in her attempts to find an escape to the ocean.
Water filled the places where she clawed at the hillsides and the lake was created, and although Haumapuhia lost her struggle when daylight came and turned her to stone, the lake's many bays and indentations are reminders of her tragic struggle.
Certainly the land offers no easy ways to get one's bearings because no single mountain peak rises above the forest and no central river dominates; it's just a series of sharp ridges and deep valleys, one upon another, spiralling out from the lake.
In fact the only interruption from the forest blanket is Panekiri Bluff, the severe rock escarpment on the lake's southern shores.
Panekiri Bluff rises 600m from the lake, its great walls glowing a golden pallor on sunny days, and wreathed in mist and cloud when it rains.
Perched high on these bluffs sits Panekiri Hut, a grand viewpoint over a superb wilderness.
For some it is near the end, and for others just the start of their circumnavigation of Waikaremoana.
Below lies the lake and a view of water and forest ridges overlapping blue on blue, while beyond, more ethereal blues denote ridges westward to the horizon.
I once stood outside looking west when a German backpacker interrupted my quiet with the simple truism: "everywhere you look is forest".
In the peace of such high places, where no water runs except for the rain and the mist gathering on trees, and no sound disturbs except the tuneless whistling of the wind, you can look upon a view without the imprint of human interference and find spoken works remarkably unnecessary.
Because many people look at Panekiri Bluff, seduced by the prospects of wonderful morning and evening views (and perhaps fearful of the hard grunt from the lake to the top), they set out to walk Waikaremoana clockwise, as most guidebooks suggest.
However, there is no method to the madness of walking straight up a bluff on the first day.
It is much better to engage a shuttle bus or water taxi to the Hopuruahine entrance and take on the hill-climb on the last day after you have eaten your way through some of your pack's load and worked a few muscles into shape.
The Lake Waikaremoana Track is a 43km-long trail, largely in excellent condition, that can be dawdled in five days and easily tramped in four.
From the Hopuruahine entrance the first five hours between Whanganui Hut and Tapuaenui Campsite to the large new Waiharuru Hut introduce you to the three types of forest that you'll encounter off and on over the next few days: a resplendent mature rimu/tawa forest, largely in the gullies; regenerating manuka/tree fern patches, usually closer to the water's edge (resulting from new surfaces exposed in 1946 when hydro development lowered the lake's level by five metres); and on the drier ridges and faces, the more open sooty-barked hard beech and mingimingi (Leucopogon fasciculatus) forest.
The diverse forest boasts some wonderfully buttressed beech trees, and perhaps because of its overall size and variety and the insects that gather over the water's edge, seems particularly rich in birdlife.
Unless you're unlucky, you'll hear and see kaka and parakeet, and at night hear moreporks calling dolefully for more pork, and screeching North Island brown kiwi.
Common birds are abundant: wood pigeons, paradise ducks, whiteheads, riflemen, grey warblers, tomtits, fantails and silvereyes.
What you almost definitely won't see (and won't be sensitive enough to hear) are the rare nocturnal long-tailed and short-tailed bats that roost in the boles of ancient trees.
Marauiti Hut, three hours' walk from Waiharuru Hut, is pleasantly sited beside a finger of water where the broad Marauiti River flows gently into the lake at Marauiti Bay.
The hut's red roof and expansive cream lounge with large windows is a convivial place even on the greyest of days, and if the mosquitoes and sandflies aren't too bad, its sheltered porch provides a good place for taking in the view while contemplating dinner.
The track beyond Marauiti heads over a beech-covered spur with strongly buttressed trees, along with many tawa and a few scattered rimu.
Then it leads down into one of Waikaremoana's typically small and grassy lakeside flats, this one at Maraunui Bay.
Here there are groves of manuka and grassy banks beside the creek and lakeside.
A virtue of this walk for those who find fitness a challenge is that no stretch is too long before you happen upon a place where you can quietly meditate upon the view and rest tired muscles.
And in such vein, although it may seem like an unnecessary uphill diversion late in the afternoon, you should take the side track up to Korokoro Falls, which are definitely worth the effort.
An enchanting ridge track leads through a lush forest of tanekaha (Phyllocladus trichomanoides), the large-leaved Dracophyllum traversii and stunted forms of beech trees standing out from the dense, twirling groves of tawa.
Below the track Te Korokorowhaitiri Stream gives sculptural expression to blocks of limestone that have been progressively rolled down the creek bed.
The smallish stream won't prepare you for the size of the waterfall, which is sighted through an envelope of large beech trees rising from a carpet of kidney ferns.
In rain, water fills the face of the fall, forming a rectangular 20m-high curtain of water.
By climbing carefully down on the left (when you look towards the falls), you can walk on a scalloped, gently sloping papa (mudstone) shelf among several huge boulders, sentinels to the falls themselves.
Because papa is so consistent in constitution, and so water-soluble, it erodes like limestone, leaving sculpted blocks of harder rocks resting on flat surfaces and weir-like drops covered with gentle flows of water.
The next day's climb from Waiapaoa to Panekiri Hut follows a series of obvious ridge lines for the first two hours, before zigzagging between bluffs to gain the Panekiri Range, and then the hut after a further hour and a-half of easy wandering.
From above the zigzag, silver beech gives way to mountain beech, and mountain totara replaces tawa as the dominant understorey trees.
On these steeper slopes the long plank-like black buttresses of beech trees form sheets that slice into the dark earth.
Misty clouds often cover the range, even when the weather is clear below.
It is at these times that the mosses and lichen blanketing the trees and branches stand out in swollen clumps, giving the impression that every tree is ancient.
After an evening and early morning at Panekiri Hut, the route down the Panekiri Range to complete the track at the road end is essentially a reversal of the day before, starting with the ancient mist forest and descending through tawa groves to the great lake.
Several lookouts on this descent not only give magnificent views, but also lead your thoughts back 2200 years, when a huge landslip detached from the Ngamoko Range (north of the lake's exit) and blocked the Waikaretaheke River, allowing the waters of Waikaremoana to fill up.
This is the geological explanation of Waikaremoana, a story that, like Maori myths and the Pakeha's sense of mystery, lies hidden under a forest mantle, but which still reverberates in the unconscious like a passionate secret.
Freebies
The Otago Daily Times has four copies of Classic Walks of New Zealand, (Craig Potton publishers, pbk, $40) by Craig Potton, to give away.
To enter the draw for one, write your name, address and daytime phone number on the back of an envelope and send it to Classic Walks Editorial Features, Response Bag 500011, Dunedin, or email playtime@odt.co.nz with "classic walks" in the subject line, to arrive before Monday, February 1.
Walk it
Lake Waikaremoana TrackTe Urewera National ParkLength: 43km.
Time required: 3-4 days.
Nearest town: WairoaBest time to walk the track: November-April.
Moderate fitness required
The Lake Waikaremoana Track is a Department of Conservation Great Walk.
It is well-constructed and has several large huts supplied with bunks, mattresses and heating.
You need to take your own cooking stoves and fuel.
Several campsites exist along the track, though camping is not permitted on the Panekiri Range (including next to Panekiri Hut).
Hut and camping passes are required, and must be booked all year round.
The track can be reached on State Highway 38, either from Wairoa in the east, or from Murupara and Rotorua west of the lake.
Bus transport operates over State Highway 38.
Approximate walking times: (anticlockwise from Hopuruahine track entrance)
Hopuruahine Landing to Whanganui Hut 2.7km, 45min, 18 bunks
Whanganui Hut to Waiharuru Hut 5.3km, 2.5hr, 40 bunks
Waiharuru Hut to Marauiti Hut 6.2km, 2hr, 25 bunks
Marauiti Hut to Waiopaoa Hut 12.1km, 4-5hr, 21 bunks
Waiopaoa Hut to Panekiri Hut 7.6km, 3.5-4.5hr, 36 bunks
Panekiri Hut to Onepoto track entrance 8.8km, 3.5-5hr
Information: Te Urewera National Park Visitor Centre, Department of Conservation, Aniwaniwa, Private Bag 2213, Wairoa 4195.
Tel: (06) 837-3803Email: teureweravc@doc.govt.nzBook online at: www.doc.govt.nz or email: greatwalksbooking@doc.govt.nz
