弗朗西斯·拉塞尔/Francis Russell

　　On this waning autumn afternoon the northern Maine landscape is tart, compelling, shadowed here and there by puffs of fair-weather cumulus, remnants of summer. Here, a dozen miles west of Waldoboro, I once spent my summers from the age of 12 to 14 at one of those Indian-named boys'camps-more years ago than I like to think about.

　　I stand on the rise near what was once the baseball diamond. To my right is the black oak, several hundred years old, beside which we used to hold our Saturday night campfires. How many times on heat-heavy August days have I stood on this rise looking out over the wooded landscape toward the Camden hills?For me it was always a magical prospect, the austere countryside stretching away with the sharp definition of an 18th-century aquatint across hill and woodland to Mt. Battie outlined against the horizon. At our campfire evenings, when we gathered around the great oak just after sunset, Mount Battie without losing its definition would take on a blue luminosity.

　　Over the years a ragged second-growth of aspen and birch and speckled alder, at the far edge of the baseball diamond, has blotted out that view. Now there is nothing to see beneath the crystalline sky but the uneven tops of second-growth trees. Already the sky has begun to taken on the steelier tints of winter. Even Mt. Battie has disappeared.

　　On sultry afternoons, when the air quivered in the cool and fading light of early evening, I used to stand here by the old oak and look out across an interlude of scrub and swamp from which several miles away, a hill emerged. As a hill it was insignificant enough. Below its bare summit an abandoned pasture lay dotted with ground juniper and outcroppings of granite. Yet something about that hill drew me, beckoned to me, across the miles. I could not bear to take my eyes from it, I knew only that before summer ended I must go to it, make my way over the pasture, up and up past shrub and granite until I stood on the very summit. It was something I had to do. I could not explain why. I did not even ask myself.

　　Not that it was easy to get away from camp. Morning and afternoon, our activities were recorded in a counselor's notebook. We had to be swimming or rowing or playing tennis or baseball or practicing a track event or going off on nature walks or making some gadget in the carpentry shop-just so long as we did something. But to do nothing, to climb a hill for no reason, that was outside the rules, against the“camp spirit”。

　　Saturday afternoons, with their influx of parents and visitors, brought a certain relaxation, less accountability. On one such blue and vivid afternoon I slipped away to get to my hill. From the great oak, I could see its summit ahead of me, unknown, inviting. Inconspicuously, I edged along the baseball field, then slipped into the underbrush.

　　It was hard going, hard to keep a sense of direction in such a tangle of vine and thicket. I stumbled over rotten logs, stepped into anthills. Marsh hillocks gave way under my feet, dead branches snagged me, prickly seeds worked into my wet sneakers. The air was stagnant. With mosquitoes droning and hover-flies circling and darting, I plodded on, losing myself and losing track of time.

　　I must have been struggling on for at least an hour. Suddenly I came to a clearing, an open grove of ash and maple, and as the sunlight filtered through the leaves. I saw in front of me a cluster of ornate diminutive houses. Brightly painted in a variety of colors, trimmed with scrollwork and cusps and scalloped shingles, with narrow, high-pitched roofs, each was no more than an arm's length from the next, and all were empty. There was no sign of any living being.

　　To me, emerging from the wood, the sunlit grove was like something out of Grimm, as if this odd little village had been put under a spell and had been asleep for 100 years. A yellow house in front of me with a blue-latticed front porch could have been waiting for Hansel and Gretel. So quiet the grove was, so still the air, that even the aspen leaves hung limp. Blue and green dragonflies, poised in the air, added to the enchantment. Far off, I could hear the wich-wich-wich of a yellow warbler and a locust's somnolent buzz. Otherwise silence.

　　I went up on the porch of a pinktrimmed house and peered through the single window. What I saw was prosaic enough-a room with a couple of chairs, a table, a couch, a kerosene lamp. A ladder led upstairs to a sleeping loft. The grove was a mystery. Why were those little houses there?Why were they empty and yet at the same time cared for?Who owned them?It was eerie to see these miniatures huddled together against all that space. I half expected some guardian to come rushing out and ask me what I was doing there.

　　I suppose my enchanted village was some sort of camp meeting ground, used a few weeks each summer. I never did find out. On that afternoon I did not linger. The sun's rays were already slanting, the shadows longer, and my hill still lay ahead of me. Again I plunged into the underbrush, breaking through at last to a rutted road scored with puddles. But at the first turning I reached the foot of the hill, my hill, open and placed in the lengthened sunshine. Its thin meadow grass had turned brown, a stone wall that once enclosed the pasture had fallen apart, and velvety mullein leaves were thrusting up between the boulders. Up I went, over a granite ledge and across the meadow, trampling down hardhack and meadowsweet in my hurry to get to the top.

　　At last, under the sky's bowl, I stood at the crest breathless, the hill solid, tangible under my feet. So often I had seen it elusive in the distance. Now I was there. Yet even as I reached my goal, it began to slip away from me. Straight ahead, beyond more miles of woodland, I could see another hill, somewhat higher, somewhat longer, cows grazing placidly on its cleared slope a summit hinged with green. Mysterious, full of promise, it was a hill I should never reach. Yet, in my old longing, that was where I wished I might be, on that farther hill. But even as I looked at it. I sensed that beyond there would be another hill, and beyond that yet another, beyond Mt. Battie, beyond Maine, beyond the miles. Even if I kept going round the world there would always be another hill. And I knew then, suddenly and overwhelmingly, that one could never reach the last hill.

　　缅因州北部的秋天，景色迷人。当黄昏降临的时候，晴朗的天空飘着的云朵为大地投下片片浓阴，仿佛夏天还没有过去。缅因州位于沃尔多博拉以西12英里，在12岁到14岁的3年时间里，我每年都去那里度假，因为那里有几个以印第安语命名的男童夏令营。然而，我现在已经不愿常常回忆那些久远的往事了。

　　我站在曾经是棒球场的土丘上，它的右方是一片百年橡树林，我们曾常常在这片树林的附近举办篝火晚会。在酷热的8月，我曾多少次站在这座土丘上，遥望葱郁树林后面的康登山脉！那大片的原野一直伸向地平线轮廓清晰的巴蒂山，中途穿过小山和树林，好似18世纪时形象鲜明的铜版画。日暮时分，轮廓变得模糊的巴蒂山笼罩在一片蓝色的暮霭之中时，我们就围在老橡树四周举办篝火晚会。

　　许多年后，棒球场四周较远的地方又长出了许多高矮不等的白杨树、白桦树，还有长着斑点的桤木，这片树林挡住了视野，曾经种在那里的树木早已被砍伐了。在这片透明的天空下，我们现在已经看不见什么，除了那些参差不齐的树冠。巴蒂山已经消失在远方，天空也披上了一层寒冷的色彩。

　　在酷热的午后，当淡淡的暮色降临时，就会吹起凉爽的微风。在那时，我经常会站在那棵老橡树的旁边，眺望着灌木丛和沼泽另一头的一座小山，那座小山距离此处有几英里的路程。那是一座极其普通的小山，没有什么值得称道的地方。一座废弃的农场坐落在光秃秃的山顶下，野生杜松和露出地面的花岗岩星罗棋布。然而，那座小山具有的一种气息吸引了我，我感到它在几英里外向我挥手。我的视线无法从那座小山移开，我下定决心在夏天逝去之前一定要去那里看一看，穿过牧场，一直向前，绕过灌木丛和花岗岩，直到站在山顶上。我无法做出解释，甚至也没有听听自己的心声，然而这是我一定要做的事情。

　　离开营地是一件相当困难的事情。我们从早晨到下午的活动，全部记录在领队老师的笔记本上。按照计划，我们的活动内容是游泳、划船、打网球、打棒球、练习田径、野外远足或者去木工房做一些手工制品。如果毫无缘由地去爬山，什么活动都不参加，那就是有悖于“夏令营精神”的行为。

　　每逢星期六下午，我们就可以放松一下，因为这天总会有许多家长和游客来营地，所以我们就减少了活动内容。那是一个晴朗的星期六下午，我趁着这个机会溜出了营地，赶往那座小山。在老橡树下，我看到那座神秘的小山山顶就在眼前，它是如此的动人心弦。我尽量不引起别人的注意，一路走到了棒球场的边缘，随后溜进了灌木丛。

　　这条路很难走，也很容易迷失方向，杂草和藤蔓纠缠丛生。我时而被枯木绊倒，时而陷进蚁穴。一踏沼泽地的小丘，我的脚就往下陷，有时还被枯枝缠住，浸湿的运动鞋里也跑进了许多带刺的草籽。蚊子嗡嗡地叫嚣着，苍蝇盘旋乱撞。我迷失了方向，忘记了时间，只知道拖着沉重的脚步缓慢地前行。

　　我挣扎着走了至少一个小时，忽然，一片长着桉树和枫树的开阔地出现在我眼前，阳光从枝叶间射了进来。我看到前方有一排装潢华丽的小房子。这些房子漆着五颜六色的旋涡形和叶尖形图案，房顶又细又高，盖了一层扇贝形的木瓦。各所房子之间的距离超不过一臂的长度，所有的房间都是空的，没有人居住的痕迹。

　　这个被阳光照射的小树林，对我这个刚刚走出灌木丛的人来说，就像《格林童话》中的仙境一般。这座奇怪的小村庄似乎在咒语的控制下沉睡了一百多年。眼前这座小房子的前廊上有着蓝色的格子，好似在等待汉塞尔和格雷蒂勒的到来。小树林中没有一丝风，白杨树的叶子也软塌塌地垂着，整个林子显得非常安静。停在半空中的蓝蜻蜓和绿蜻蜓一动不动，这更增加了这里的神秘气息。远处，一只小黄鸟的鸣叫声和一只蝉催人打瞌睡的嗡嗡声传入耳中，不然真是寂静无声了。

　　我走上了一座用石竹花装饰的房子的前廊，透过一个独立的窗户向里面望去。整个房间就放着两把椅子、一张长桌子、一把躺椅以及一盏煤油灯，除此之外，就是一架通往阁楼卧室的梯子，这些都是很普通的家什。这真是谜一样的树林。那里为什么会有那些小房子？为什么空无一人的房间还有人来打理？房子的主人是谁呢？这片空地被这些袖珍小屋挤得满满当当的，恐惧笼罩了我，真希望突然跑出一个看门人，问我来这里做什么。

　　我始终没能破解这个谜，也许那是夏令营的活动之地，每年的夏天会使用几周。太阳光已经向西倾斜，把地上的影子拉得越来越长，那座小山还在我的前方。我再次钻进灌木丛，好不容易走上了一条崎岖的小路，刚拐过第一个路口，山脚就在我的面前。那渴望的小山向我张开了怀抱，霞光披在它的身上。当年牧场四周砌的石墙已经垮塌了，贫瘠的牧场草地变成了一片棕褐色，卵石的缝隙中钻出了毛蕊花叶，它看起来是那样的柔软。我开始攀登了，翻越了一块花岗岩，在穿过草地时还踩倒了许多绒毛绣线菊和珍珠花，迈着急切的步伐冲向了山顶。

　　最终，我上气不接下气地站在小山坚实的土地上，头顶就是蓝天，是的，小山就在我的脚下。曾经多少次，我站在远方遥望小山，现在，我终于来到了这里。然而，在我刚刚实现了目标后，它又从我的身旁无声无息地溜走了。在绵延几英里的森林地带的正前方，我发现了一座更高更长的山，山顶上绿意盎然，山坡是被开垦过的，几头牛正在那里静静地吃草。然而，我肯定无法再到那座山了，那真是一座神秘的山，令人憧憬。那才是我曾经渴望并真正想去的地方。然而，在我向那里注目观望时，意识告诉我，那后面肯定还有另一座山。巴蒂山以外，缅因州以外，甚至几英里以外的地方，都还会有山。即使不停歇地走遍全世界，我总会找到另一座山。就在那时，我恍然大悟，人是永远也不可能找到最后一座山的。

　　心灵小语

　　人生是有限的，然而人的追求、探索却是无止境的——你找到你的另一座山了吗？

　　词汇笔记

　　sultry['s?ltri:]adj.闷热的；狂暴的

　　It was a close, sultry day.

　　那是一个郁闷酷热的日子。

　　gadget['g?d??t]n.小玩意；小配件；小装置

　　Do you have an expensive gadget habit?

　　你有买很贵的小玩意的习惯吗？

　　sunlit['s?n, l?t]adj.阳光照射的

　　The house has two big sunlit rooms.

　　这栋房子有两间向阳的大屋子。

　　prosaic[pr??'ze??k]adj.平凡的，乏味的；散文体的

　　The truth is more prosaic.

　　真相更加乏味。

　　小试身手

　　在酷热的午后，当淡淡的暮色降临时，就会吹起凉爽的微风。

　　译______________________________

　　离开营地是一件相当困难的事情。

　　译______________________________

　　一只小黄鸟的鸣叫声和一只蝉催人打瞌睡的嗡嗡声传入耳中，不然真是寂静无声了。

　　译______________________________

　　短语家族

　　Brightly painted in a variety of colors, trimmed with scrollwork and cusps and scalloped shingles……

　　a variety of：各种各样，不同种类

　　造______________________________

　　Practicing a track event or going off on nature walks.

　　go off：进行，走开，爆炸，开火，突然响起

　　造______________________________