Unit 9 - Journey West
In 1976, during America's bicentennial celebration, a family decided to travel to the American West instead of joining the majority of people that were celebrating on the East Coast. They wanted to follow the trails that the pioneers had made when they began to settle the West. The family was looking forward to making their own discoveries.
JOURNEY WEST
Jim Doherty
We began our trip out West on June 19, 1976, a time when millions of other American families were preparing to crowd into the Bicentennial shrines of the East. We sized up America's 200th birthday celebration a bit differently. Although the Republic may have been born in the East, it had spent most of its time and energies since then moving west. So we resolved to head in the same direction in 1976, following the old pioneer trails and the famous rivers. Concentrating primarily on Wyoming and Montana, we would explore such legendary mountain ranges as the Big Horns, the Bitterroots and the Swan.
There was one problem though, I was sure our four kids -- educated about the West through the movies -- would be disappointed. As an environmental editor, I knew that strip mining was tearing up many scenic areas and that clear-cutting was causing widespread damage in the mountains. I was well aware that draining and damming were making a mess of many rivers and wetlands. The grasslands were overgrazed and coal-burning power were befouling the air. Wildlife was on the run everywhere and tourists were burning the national parks into slums.
I was prepared for the worst. But how to prepare the kids?
The answer, we decided, was to undertake our journey not just as tourists on a holiday, but as reporters on the trail of "the real West." So all of us, from my kids to my wife, pledged to do our homework before we left and to record on the way everything we did, saw, hear, felt or thought.
Predictably, we did not uncover any new truths about the West in three short weeks. But there were plenty of surprises on that 5,200-mile journey and the biggest one was this: I had been wrong. Some of the troubles we saw were every bit as bad as I had dreaded. But by and large, the country was as glorious, as vast and as overwhelmingly spectacular as those know-nothing kids had expected!
Half the fun of going west is discovering, along the way, how much the past is still with us. Old wives' tales. Little old farm towns shaded from the summer heat by enormous maple trees on streets. White-haired folks reading the paper on their farmhouse porches at sunset. Worn-out windmills standing alone in pasture… All in all, we did not see much evidence that small-town America is vanishing as we traveled through rural Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota. It's true that many new homes are rising in many old cornfields. But for the most part, life in vast areas of the American heartland remains pretty much the same as it was 30 and 40 years ago.
In the hilly farmlands of southern Wisconsin and Minnesota, we found the fields and forests green and the creeks still flowing. The farms, with their "eggs for sale" signs and enormous "grandma's gardens" in the front yards, looked prosperous and secure. Not much further north, though, a drought was threatening the land.
In South Dakota, the situation was far worse. "Haven't seen anything like this since the dirty thirties," one farmer told us. Even in normal times, most of South Dakota is dry. Now it was being burned to a crisp. The water holes were dried up and we saw dead cattle lying here and there on the treeless, rolling range. Some farmers were hauling water out to their thirsty stock daily; others were trying to drill deep wells.
We saw two distinctly different Wyomings. We crossed the first Wyoming between the Black Hills and the Big Horns. Wide-open grassland, fenced and colorless, with red rocks and sweet-smelling shrubs scattered about, it was typical of a hard-used land. Cattle grazed on it. Oil rigs pumped on it and power lines zigzagged all over it. Freight trains labored across it, hauling coal from strip mine to power plant, hauling uranium and other minerals to refineries. This Wyoming, clearly, was booming.
The other Wyoming started some miles east of Buffalo, an unexpectedly graceful community in the foothills of the Big Horns. On one side of town, antelope abounded by fours and fives in the hills, and yellow wild flowers lined the roads. On the other side rose the Big Horns and nearly 10,000 feet up, Powder River Pass cut through them.
The Big Horn canons were incredible, with four and five distinct layers of pine trees somehow clinging to the steep, rocky walls. Far, far below, Ten Sleep Creek was a thin, white torrent on the rampage. In some of the less wild terrain, we saw deer on the high green hillsides and, as we climbed up toward our picnic spot, we flushed two does and two fawns. That night, we fell asleep with the roar of Ten Sleep in our ears.
We had picked by chance for our stopping place an area rich in western lore. At one time, Ten Sleep -- a small village at the western base of the Big Horns -- lay midway between two great Indian camps. In those days, the Indians measured distances by the number of sleeps and the halfway mark between those two camps was exactly ten sleeps.
We crossed the Continental Divide for the first time on a cool morning, cutting through the Rockies in northwestern Wyoming at a place called Togwatee Pass (at a height of 9,656 feet). Our van had just leveled off and we were rounding a downhill bend when, all at once, there they were, stretched out before us in a spectacular procession of massive white peaks: the Tetons. My wife gasped and, behind us, the kids began to yell. In truth, it was a startling sight—— a sight none of us will ever forget.
We had seen mountains before, but we had never experienced anything even remotely like that initial impact of the Tetons. It was exactly what we had in mind when we decided to take our first trip "out West."
参考译文——西行纪事
1976年，在美国两百世纪庆典期间，一个家庭决定到美国西部去旅行，而不加入在东海岸庆典的大部分人员。他们想去跟随最早在西部定住的先驱者的踪迹，获得他们自己的发现。
吉姆·多尔蒂
1976年6月19日，我们出发去西部旅行，当时数百万美国家庭正准备涌向位于东部的两百年大庆的圣地。我们对美国建国两百周年庆典的看法有点与众不同。虽然共和国诞生在东部，但建国之后的绝大部分时间和精力都花在向西开拓上。因此我们决定在1976也沿着老一代拓荒者的足迹和名川大河向西进发。我们的重点是考察怀俄明和蒙大拿，同时去领略大霍恩、比特鲁特以及斯旺等充满传奇色彩的山脉和风光。
不过，还有一个问题。我敢肯定我们的四个孩子——他们关于西部的知识是通过电影获得的——会失望的。作为一个生态环境编辑，我知道，露天采矿正在毁掉许多风景区，砍掉成片森林给山区造成广泛的破坏。我很清楚，挖沟排水和筑坝拦水正把许多河流和沼泽地搞得一团糟。草原上牧群太多，烧煤的电厂正在污染着空气。野生动物四处奔逃，游客们把国家公园变成贫民窟一般。
我作了最坏的打算，但孩子们怎么办呢？
我们的办法是，不把我们的旅行单单当作假日游玩，而是把自己看作记者，踏着山径小道，采访“真正的西部”。 所以我们全体，从孩子到妻子，发誓在出发前作好充分准备，一路上详细纪录我们所做、所见、所闻以及感觉到和想到的一切。
不出所料，在短短的三周中，我们没有发现有关西部的新情况。发现我的预料错了。我们见到的某些问题就像我们当初担心的那样。但总的来说，我们的河山光辉、辽阔和令人倾倒！正像那些一无所知的孩子们所期待的那样。
我们向西旅行，一半的乐趣在于边走边看，看看过去的东西还留存多少。依旧是那些古老的故事，传统的观点。依旧是一座座老式的农村小镇，它们靠着沿街两侧的巨大枫树免受炎夏烈日之苦。夕阳西下时，白发苍苍的老人们坐在家舍门廊上看报，牧场上破旧的风车孑然而立。总之，我们没有见到多少迹象能够表明美国小城镇的固有风貌正在消失。我们游遍威斯康星、明尼苏达和南达科他的农村。诚然，在许多昔日的玉米地里，新的房屋正在耸起。但就大部分地方而言，美国中心地带广大地区的生活与三四十年前相比，差不多依然如旧。
在威斯康星和明尼苏达南部的丘陵地带的农业地区，我们看到农田和森林青翠葱绿，山间小溪依然流水潺潺。挂着“出售鸡蛋”牌子、门前庭院里专门辟出大块“老祖母园地”的农场，一派繁荣昌盛、无忧无虑的景象。然而再往北去不远，一场旱灾正威胁着大地。
在南达科他州，情况更严重。“自糟糕的30 年代以来，还未见到过如此大旱。”一个农场主告诉我们说。即使天气正常，南达科他的大部分地区也很干燥。而现在大地被烤得如同焦土一般。水坑干涸了，我们到处看到死去的牲口倒在那没有树木，绵延起伏的放牧地带。有些农场主每天拉水去喂干渴的牲口，另一些人正在设法打深井。
我们见到两个截然不同的怀俄明。在黑山和大霍恩山脉之间，我们穿越了第一个怀俄明。这里是一片开阔的草原，到处有栅栏篱笆，色彩显得很单调，除了遍布各处的红岩和发出芳香气息的灌木外，这是典型的被使用得过分的土地。在这片土地上，牲畜在吃草，钻塔在抽油，输电线纵横交借，四通八达，货车在缓慢吃力地行驶，将露天矿的煤拉到发电厂，将铀及其它矿产拉到冶炼厂。显然，这一个怀俄明正处于兴旺发达、蓬勃发展的时期。
从布法罗以东数英里开始，就是另一个怀俄明了。这是大霍恩山脉丘陵地带的一个异常优美的地区。位于小镇一边的山坡上，三五成群的羚羊到处可见，黄色的野花开遍路边。在小镇的另一边，大霍恩山峰高高耸立在将近一万英尺的高处，波德河隘口穿山而过。
大霍恩峡谷简直令人不可思议。陡峭古壁上长着松树，有四五个清晰可辨的层次，它们像粘附在岩石上似的。在老远、老远的下面，十眠河看上去成了一条纤细的、奔腾不息的白色激流。在一些不那么荒凉的地方，当我们爬上我们的野餐地点时，我们惊起了两只母鹿和两只幼鹿。那天夜里，我们在十眠河的轰鸣声中入睡。
碰巧的是，我们选择的停歇处是一个富于西部传说的地区。位于大霍恩西部山脚的小村子十眠镇。曾经是两个大的印第安人营地之间的中间点。那时候，印第安人以睡眠的次数计量距离，而两个营地之间的一半，正好是十次睡眠的路程。
在一个凉爽的早晨，我们第一次越过大陆分水岭，在怀俄明西北部一个叫做托格瓦提关（高达9656英尺）的地方时，穿越了洛矶山脉。当我们的车子刚刚进入水平行驶，绕过一个下山的弯道时，突然间，一座接一座的壮丽的、高大的、白色山峰展现在我们眼前，这就是提腾山脉。我妻子惊叹不已。坐在我们身后的孩子们禁不住喊叫了起来。这确是个奇观——一种我们永远也不会忘记的壮丽景色。
我们过去也曾见过大山，却从未体验过初见提腾山脉时引起的这种激动心情。而这正是当初我们决定第一次“西行”时心中所期待的。
参考资料：
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