翻译天堂  2016-09-13

冬日絮语

Out on ice I feel the same age as the children, and do not tire, and the leaps of my heart are in perfect lockstep with theirs. 置身冰天雪地的户外，我仿佛又回到了孩提时代。我倍感精力充沛，心儿也随着孩子们的节拍一起欢跳。

When I consider whether anything memorable or extraordinary has happened to me up here in the Montana winter, I come up lacking. I don’t have a specific winter’s tale. Or if I ever had one, it has been wiped clean from the slate; no memory or even hint of a memorable winter event exists. It’s as if all the winters of my life have hypnotized me, committing my memory to snow melt, to runoff. 蒙大拿的冬日有值得怀恋的特别之处吗？我无从想起。我的冬天是平淡的。纵然有些许故事，也早已从记忆的书写板上抹去，没有留下任何痕迹，哪怕是点点滴滴。似乎在冬天的日子里我总是被麻醉了，记忆伴冰雪笑容，随融水而逝。

Mostly I remember the ephemera of winter -- the regular details, hypnotic and soothing in their repetition and their steadfast predictability, which give a peculiar sweetness to the so-short days, the steadiness of the non-events. It’s possible that I’m sleeping through most of winter’s memorability. (Often in January and February I sleep ten hours a night; I’m exhausted by five in the evening, wobbly by six, longing for the pillow by seven, and snoring by eight.) But I don’t think so. I don’t believe that it’s in winter’s nature to live by big events. Winter lacks the pyrotechnics of spring, the brute, strapping joy of summer, the old sugary nostalgia of autumn. It’s just cold and elegant, monochromatic, somnolent. Animals are asleep or gone south. I might hear a lone raven croak or caw, and the integrity of that sound, so isolate, can seem almost shattering. For a moment I nearly awaken -- such crispness, amid a time of all-other muted-ness, lures my heart up and out of its sleepy resting time. But then the raven is gone. I listen to the cloth-cutting sound of its heavy wingbeats, and then even that is gone, and it doesn’t call again. 能记起的冬日大多是日常之事，它们日复一日，平和而安详，短暂的冬日也因此而甜美万分。是不是因为我的酣睡而错过了冬天里的件件大事？我可不这么想。依靠轰轰烈烈，这原不是冬天的本性。冬无春的缤纷、夏的浓烈，也不像秋天会让人情思绵绵。冬是一个冰冷的单色世界，静寂而高雅。动物们或冬眠熟睡，或已南迁远行。闯入梦里的可是渡鸦的清啼？在万籁俱寂之时，这完整悦耳的叫声撼人心灵。有片刻，我几乎从梦中醒来，为这清脆而骚动。然而渡鸦飞走了，我听到它扑展厚重翅膀发出的扑哧声响。继而，这声响也消失了，再也不闻渡鸦的啼鸣。

I remember the sounds in town in early winter, as the trucks go driving past with their rattling, clanking tire chains. But I’m not sure that’s memorable. I remember the sight of a swarm of mayflies hatching along the river during a snowstorm, when the temperature was right around freezing: mayflies rising and disappearing into a descending curtain of snow.我想起了初冬时城市的声音，那是货车轮胎上链条的喀哒声，但我不信它会留在人们的记忆里。我记起了暴风雪中一群蜉蝣在河边孵化生命的情景，那已是结冰时节，蜉蝣飞了起来，然后都融入了漫漫雪幕之中。

I remember the way the house gets warmer in the middle of the night when it’s snowing -- as if someone had laid another blanket over me. I remember what it’s like to wake briefly, feel that extra warmth, know without having to look out the window that the snow has begun again, and then go back to sleep. 我仍然记得冬夜的飞雪像是给睡梦中的人又盖上了一床毯子，室内也因此更加温暖起来。梦醒片刻，倍感融融暖意，不用看窗外就可知冬雪又飞舞起来了。我再次安然入睡。

I remember walking outside one day in midwinter, when my skin was already dry and tight -- going from 60° indoors to -45° outside. When the cold air hit my face, my skin contracted so quickly that the thin skin on the bridge of my nose split, as if a fine knife had been drawn across it, and a spray of blood leaped out from that split. 我还记得隆冬的一天在户外步行的情形，已是浑身干涩的我从华氏60度的室内骤然走到零下45度的户外，只感到寒风扑面，侵肌裂骨。鼻梁上薄薄的皮肤早已裂开，如同刀片划过，鲜血从裂缝中溅出。

What I remember about winters past is the sweet and complete loneliness, and the deep rest of down time. The incredible, unyielding slowness. The purple, snow-laden skies dense over the twin humps of Roderick Butte outside my kitchen window: the same view every day. 我所记得的冬天困闲逸而甜美；工厂暂时停工休整，静悄悄的似已酣睡。缓慢笼罩着，缓慢得令人难以置信。透过厨房的窗户可见罗德里克山，它的两座姊妹峰托着紫铜色的满是积雪云的厚厚苍穹，此景如静物山水，终日不变，日日如新。

The routine: up early, eat a bowl of oatmeal, drive my older daughter to school, return home, fix coffee, head out to the cabin to work, shuffling through the new snow, usually ankle-deep. Such stillness: to remember color or sound at that time of year, one must go into the imagination. Build a fire in the wood stove. Work for three or four hours. Go back to the house. Only a few hours of light left, just enough time to put on snowshoes or cross-country skis and set out for a short trip, which is a necessary thing every day, no matter what the weather -- necessary for the beauty, but also to keep the blood flowing, to keep cabin fever at bay. Down in the depths of winter a fine line distinguishes euphoria from despair for the unpracticed or the extravagant. One has to move carefully, slowly, as if on thin ice above a deep emotional chasm.今天只是昨日的简单重复：早起；吃碗燕麦粥；驱车送女儿上学；返回；煮咖啡；曳步走过没膝的新雪去小木屋干干活。一切都如此宁静，如果不靠想象，在这样的时节，你会全然忘却声音或其他色彩的存在。向炉中加点木柴，生上火，干上三四个小时的活，然后回家。这时离开天黑也就几小时了，穿上雪鞋或越野滑板，抓紧这日暮前的最后时间开始短暂的踏雪旅行。无论天气如何，这种旅行是每日的必需。

While I’m out on snowshoes or skis, even with my heart pounding and my blood running strong, I find that I’ll nonetheless fall back into trances, into winter states of near-hypnosis. I can stare for long moments at the stark white of an aspen tree against the day’s new snow, with more falling, or at the ice scallop where a deer bedded down, the warmth of its body melting its shape into fallen snow, the cast as yet unfilled by the oncoming snow. And I can be made inexplicably happy by such staring. 身置户外，即使在心儿狂跳不已、热血沸腾之时，我也深觉自己终将陷入恍惚之中，这是冬日的昏睡，如同遭受了催眠。我会长时间凝视飞雪曼舞中洁白的山杨树或鹿儿在雪原上宿夜所留下的扇贝状冰纹，那是它体温融化积雪的痕迹，新雪依然没有将其淹没。注视此情此景会给我莫名的快乐。

Time to push on, gliding on the skis. Not going anywhere, and not running from anything. Just going. 乘着雪橇向前滑行，没有目的地，也不是为了逃避，只是一味地勇往直前。