國家地理:一次翻越世界屋脊的歷史性旅行(4)

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Ali's friendly wife, Kushnamamash, baked us hot, gritty naan -- flatbread. We pitched our tents on the couple's narrow grass terrace. Ranks of poplars rustled in a silver breeze. The austere Wakhan was experiencing a green revolution. Tree plantations were shading the once naked canyon bottoms, and some Wakhi were tasting their first homegrown tomatoes and squash. It was the changing climate. Apricots were blossoming two months early, and a sudden tide of glacier melt was making irrigation easier.

阿里熱情的妻子庫什娜瑪瑪什給我們烤了滾熱的馕（一種烤餅）。我們把帳蓬扎在夫妻倆窄窄的草坪上，成排的白楊在微風中沙沙作響。古樸的瓦罕正在經(jīng)歷一場綠色革命，越來越多的林地遮蔽了曾經(jīng)裸露的峽谷底部，一些瓦罕人吃上了自家種的第一個西紅柿和南瓜。這要歸功于氣候變化，冰川融化越來越快的趨勢使得灌溉更加容易，杏花開放已經(jīng)提前了兩個月。

It won't last, of course. Someday the glaciers of the Hindu Kush and Pamirs will drain away, and the old hungers will return. But for those shining days on foot, the roadless valleys of the Wakhan felt like a place I'd been walking toward my entire life without knowing it. Slate river shingle rang underfoot like coins. Crows pinwheeled in seamless blue skies. In September the high pastures of the Kyrgyz nomads in the eastern Wakhan held the sun's fire like old amber. Boulders the size of houses shone like colossal mirrors on the barren mountain slopes: Their surfaces had been buffed smooth as glass by long-vanished walls of ice.

當然，這不可能持續(xù)下去，總有一天興都庫什山和帕米爾的冰川會漸漸消失，過去的饑餓將重新出現(xiàn)。但在目前這些陽光明媚的日子里，瓦罕眾多不通公路的山谷就好像我此生一直在朝它走的地方，盡管我不知道那里。石板河里的石板在腳下像硬幣一樣排列，烏鴉在湛藍的天空中盤旋。九月里，瓦罕東部吉爾吉斯族游牧民的高原牧場在火紅的陽光照耀下像古老的琥珀。房子大小的巖石在貧瘠的山坡上像巨大的鏡子一樣閃閃發(fā)光，因為巨石的表面被早已消失的冰墻所磨光。

Ice ages come in cycles. The next one will shove the rubble of our cities down to lower latitudes. The ice ages will wipe out all evidence of Ali's frail woodlot and easily smear away the deep tank tracks the Soviets left in the Wakhan pastures almost 40 years ago. The ruts look brand-new. And eventually another Wakhi will appear to thresh, to prod his oxen over cut wheat—3,600 rotations, by my calculation, for each disk of bread. It's all a circle.

冰河時代循環(huán)往復，下一次冰期將把我們城市的廢墟推到低緯度地區(qū)。冰河時期將抹掉牧羊人阿里那脆弱林地的所有痕跡，并將很容易地抹去近40年前蘇聯(lián)留在瓦罕牧場的深深的坦克印跡，盡管這些車轍看起來仍然嶄新。最后，另一個瓦罕民族會為面包而來打谷，來趕著牛碾小麥，我估計這得要3600年，那是一個完整的循環(huán)。