缅因之冬

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【导读】达纳·王尔德被称为“后院自然学家”，现居美国缅因州特洛伊市，其创作见于《科幻与奇幻小说》（Fantasy ＆ Science Fiction，常简称为F＆SF）、《阿西莫夫科幻杂志》（Asimov’s）及《探索》（The Quest）。他最新的作品有《从夏至秋——缅因森林中的音符和守护神》（Summer to Fall: Notes and Numina in the Maine Woods）和《星云——后院宇宙学》（Nebulae: A Backyard Cosmography），其关于缅因州自然界的创作收录于《车道另一头》（The Other End of the Driveway）。

达纳·王尔德曾在“冬之阴暗面”（The Dark Side of Winter）一文里有如此记述：“我记得很久以前读到18世纪的移民为了逃避马萨诸塞州的迫害而往缅因州方向逃亡，但没多久，很多人就因其‘折胶堕指的冬’又折返了回去。”（I remember reading long ago of 18th century settlers fleeing Maine-ward to escape oppressions in Massachusetts and many of them bouncing back because of“extremely harsh winters,” writes Dana Wilde.）下面这篇散文将让读者对缅因州“折胶堕指的冬”一斑见豹。原文“冬季卫星”（Winter Moons）载于1996年第281卷第5期《北美评论》（The North American Review），本文为节选，标题据节选内容有改动。

Here in Maine, winter is long and cold.In the past it was even longer and colder, or so memory and certain old people of Thoreau’s journal entries from before 1850 notes without surprise a fairly heavy snowfall in was in Massachusetts, which is still part of the temperate north and east, beyond New Hampshire, the Saco River in southern Maine is the accepted anthropological divisor of the Eastern Woodlands region from the Eastern Subarctic region.“Subarctic” refers to a length and depth of winter freeze which is something less than limits of a subarctic winter might accurately be described as the months when snow can reasonably be expected to bury in earlier times, the months when food became scarce to of Maine drowses through winter from November to April.

缅因州冬季漫长寒冷，据回忆和一些老人说，过去更长更冷。梭罗1850年前的一篇日志上不出意外记载了，4月中还下过相当大的一场雪。那是在马萨诸塞州，如今仍属于气候温和的东部。再往北、往东，出了新罕布什尔州，就到了缅因州南部的萨科河，从人类学角度看，这条河是东部林区和东部亚北极地区公认的分水岭。“亚北极”指冬季冰冻的时长和程度只比极地略逊一筹。亚北极地区的冬季时限或可准确描述为，可以合理预计雪能覆盖一切的那几个月；早期，则是食物变得稀缺乃至根本没有食物的那几个月。从11月到次年4月，缅因州大部分都在沉睡中度过整个冬季。

2 By late January the cold has normally been so long and so thorough that it’s difficult even to stay ice grinds everything to a halt1grind to a halt=come to a grinding halt 慢慢停下来。, or so close to a halt that for all intents and purposes nothing roads are frozen,and so are your piles up everywhere, obliterating the driveway and the baseball fields the only signs that anything ever lived are dead spokes of grass or a few uncut corn stalks, the occasional raccoon, fox or deer tracks in the snow.You don’t want to go want to stay in where the heat is, smell the wood smoke or the dry, nylon odor of electric inner staleness of the kitchen,unventilated since house is a core of warmth, like a seems unutterably small after a while, but at least it’s not the cold, we describe even the warm by what it’s not.

2 到1月底，已经冷了那么久，一切都冻透了，想要保持清醒都很难。冰使得万事万物渐渐陷入停顿，或几近停顿以至任何意图和目的都无法达成。路全冻住了，连你的骨头都冻住了。到处都堆着雪，挡住了车道，盖住了棒球场。田野里，能显示之前有活物存在的标志只有一些死草桩或几根没收割的玉米秆，还有雪地里偶尔能看到的浣熊、狐狸或鹿的踪迹。你不想出门，就想待在有暖气的地方，闻着木头燃烧的味道或电炉丝干燥的尼龙味。厨房从10月起就再未通风，散发着陈腐味。房子像个洞穴，是温暖的核心。待一阵子后，房子似乎小得无以名状，但至少没有冻住。寒冷的日子里，即使描述暖和，我们也会用不冷之类的词儿。

3 Cold is the absence of heat.Ice is that pervasive presence in the universe which signifies what is on really arctic nights the ice—or maybe not the ice itself but its stillness and hardness—becomes fascinating, and I feel sucked outside to see the from the artifciial fries of western culture, which throw smoke and black soot all over chunky roadside snowbanks, the snow in the woods remains purely white, even during its porous melting period in whiteness is a blankness, even more complete than on the ocean surface because it does not of tiny frozen water crystals, motionless, piling up around the hemlocks and in the arms of pines,bluish in moon suspended, waiting for the Sun to come up.

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