乡间雪景 Snow in the Country ⑴ (中英对照)

Snow in the Country
乡间雪景

There was a blizzard on Christmas day, with the wind blowing from the northwest. I found, when I went out in the early afternoon, that the snow had been blown into a drift in the windbreak. A bank of snow, then, beside the lane; and in the lee of every tree trunk, every sturdy twig, every obstacle, there was a sharp ridge that indicated the direction of the wind.
圣诞节那天，暴风雪从天而降，西北风也呼啸而来。下午早些时候出去时，我发现防风林里已经堆起厚厚的积雪。小路旁已经积满了一排雪；每一根树干、每一根结实的树枝、每一个障碍物的背风处，积雪都形成清晰的边界，显示出风向。

The shape and texture of this snow drift reminded me of a climate quite different: of a Trinidad beach where shallow streams—fresh water mingled with salt,salt predominating or lessening according to the tides—ran from tropical woodland to the sea. These streams rose and subsided with the tide. Water flowed now from the sea to the pools of the woodland river, now in the other direction. At every low tide the streams cut fresh channels in the freshly laid sand, created fresh sand cliffs, which then, when the tide began to rise again, fell neatly, segment by clean segment, into the rippled current: a geography lesson in miniature. To me as a child these streams always brought to mind the beginning of the world, the world before men, before the settlement. (Romance and ignorance: for though there were no longer aboriginal people on the island, they had been there for millennia.)
这雪堆的形状和质感让我想起了一种截然不同的气候：在特立尼达岛的海滩上，浅滩溪流从热带森林流向了海洋，淡水混合着盐分，潮水的涨落决定盐分的多少。溪流随潮汐涨落。水时而从海里流向林地的河塘，时而反向流动。每到退潮的时候，溪流就在刚刚沉积的沙地上开辟出新的水道，形成新的沙崖，当潮水再次上涨时，这些沙崖就整齐利落地垮下去，一段段落入滚滚涌流中：这是一堂小型地理课。孩提时，这些溪流总让我想起洪荒时代，那个人类尚未出现、拓荒尚未开始的世界。（这是浪漫而无知的想法：虽然岛上不再有土著居民，但他们曾经在这里生活了数千年。）

So the texture and shapes and patterns of the snow here on the down in the windbreak and in its lee created, in small, the geography of great countries.
因而，在下面的防风林及其背风处，雪的质感、形状和图案构造了这辽阔乡土的微观地貌。

Beyond the brow of the hill the wind was keen; shelter was no longer provided by the hill or the windbreak. A livid gray sky, a gray but warm dirtiness, hung over the great plain, where the barrows were like pimples: the stone circles lost in the snow, blurring the view at the edges, no sight of the colored artillery targets. At the bottom of the hill, among the farm buildings (made monumental by the snowfall), was the dead cottage of Jack: snow lying on the ground about it (the drove-way there normally so muddy and black) like a great clean thing, like a remaking of the world.
山脊的另一边，寒风凛冽；小山或防风林已不能再提供庇护。青灰色的天空灰蒙蒙的，一片污浊，却又显暖意，就这样笼罩着大平原，平原上的一座座古坟就像人脸上凸起的一个个粉刺：巨石阵消失在雪地里，四面八方的景致模糊了，彩色的火炮靶子也无迹可循了。山脚下，杰克那间死气沉沉的农舍就在那些农场建筑中间（大雪的覆盖使它们看起来更显宏伟）：雪覆盖了房子周围的地面（那里的车道通常泥泞污黑），使农舍看起来干净极了，就像重塑了一个世界。