[00:00.00] Annie Dillard tells of her visit to the Napo River in the heart of the Ecuadorian jungle
[00:07.00]one of nature's most unspoiled places.
[00:11.23]She describes the beauty of the forest and her admiration for the people who live there.
[00:17.87]IN THE JUNGLE by Annle Dillard
[00:21.97]Like any out-of-the-way place,the Napo River in the Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there
[00:30.38]even central.Out of the way of what?I was sitting on a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village
[00:40.33]in the middle of the night,on the headwaters of the Amazon.
[00:44.77]Out of the way of human life,tenderness,or the glance of heaven?
[00:50.91]A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long notes,and hushed.The men with me talked softly:
[01:00.21]three North Americans,four Ecuadorians who were showing us the jungle.We were holding cool drinks
[01:08.44]and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb on the generator shed beside us
[01:17.24]It was February,the middle of summer.Green fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for seconds
[01:27.01]now here,now there,the pale trunks of enormous,solitary trees.
[01:33.20]Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising,in all silence;
[01:39.27]it coiled up the sandly bank and tangled its foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that looped the shore
[01:48.62]Each breath of night smelled sweet.Each star in Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath
[01:57.29]All at once,in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder,playing a tune
[02:06.01]that twined over the village clearing,muted our talk on the bankside,and wandered over the river,dissolving downstream
[02:15.60]This will do,I thought.This will do,for a weekend,or a season,or a home.
[02:24.35]Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and combed it smooth not for myself,
[02:32.19]but so the village girls could play with it in the morning.
[02:36.58]We had disembarked at the village that afternoon,and I had slumped on some shaded steps,
[02:43.76]wishing I knew some Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of little girls
[02:50.66]who were alterntely staring at me and smiling at their toes.I spoke anyway,and fooled with my hair,
[02:58.96]which they were obviously dying to get their hands on,and laughed,
[03:03.48]and soon they were all braiding my hair,all five of them,
[03:08.47]all fifty fingers,all my hair,even my bangs.
[03:13.25]And then they took it apart and did it again,laughing,and teaching me Spanish nouns,
[03:20.18]and meeting my eyes and each other's with open delight,while their small brothers in blue jeans
[03:27.33]climbed down from the trees and began kicking a volleyball around with one of the North American men.
[03:34.47]Now,as I combed my hair in the little tent,another of the men,a free-lance writer from Manhattan
[03:42.77]was talking quietly.He was telling us the tale of his life,describing his work in Hollywood,his apartment in Manhattan
[03:52.62]his house in Paris…It makes me wonder,"he said,"what I'm doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya
[04:02.10]on the Napo River,in the jungle of Ecuador."After a pause he added,"It makes me wonder why I'm going back.
[04:13.02]The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything
[04:20.68]It is simply to see what is there.We are here on the planet only once,and might as well get a feel for the place
[04:30.08]We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived,
[04:35.04]for the Amazon basin,which covers half a continent,
[04:39.59]and for the life that-there,like anywhere else-is always and necessarily lived in detail:
[04:46.93]on the tributaries,inthe riverside villages,sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade
[04:56.36]What is there is interesting.The Napo River itself is wide and brown,opaque,
[05:04.09]and smeared with floating foam and branches from the jungle.Parrots in flocks dart in and out of the light
[05:13.63]Under the water in the river,unseen,are anacondas--
[05:18.93]which are reputed to take a few village toddlers every year-and water boas,crocodiles,and sweet-meated fish
[05:28.07]Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the natives build tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight fishing trips
[05:36.77]You see these extraordinarily clean people(who bathe twice a day in the river,
[05:43.33]and whose straight black hair is always freshly washed)padding down the river in dugout canoes,hugging the banks
[05:52.16]Some of the Indians of this region,earlier in the century,used to sleep naked in hammocks.The nights are cold
[06:01.38]Gordon MacCreach,an American explore in these Amazon tributaies,
[06:07.26]reported that he was startled to hear the Indians get up at three in the morning.He was even more startled
[06:15.22]night after night,to hear them walk down to the river slowly,half asleep,and bathe in the water.
[06:23.45]Only later did he learn what they were doing:they were getting warm.
[06:28.57]The cold woke them;they warmed their skins in the river,
[06:34.06]which was always ninety degrees;then they returned to their hammocks and slept through the rest of the night
[06:42.00]When you are inside the jungle,away from the river,the trees vault out of sight.Butterflies,brightblue,striped
[06:52.11]or clear-winged,thread the jungle paths at eye levelAnd at your feet is a swant of ants bearing triangular bits of green leaf
[07:02.43]The ants with their leaves look like a wide fleet of sailing dinghies-but they don't quit.
[07:09.66]In either direction they wobble over the jungle floor as far as the eye can see .
[07:15.57]Long lakes shine in the jungle.We traveled one of these in dugout canoes,canoes paddled with machete-hewn oars
[07:25.49]or poled in the shallows with bamboo.Our part-Indian guide had cleared the path to the lake the day before
[07:33.98]when we walked the path we saw where he had impaled the lopped head of a boa,open-mouthed,
[07:41.22]on a pointed stick by the canoes,for decoration.
[07:45.58]This lake was wonderful.Herons plodded the shores,kingfishers and cuckoos clattered from sunlight to shade
[07:54.96]great turkey like birds fussed in dead branches,and hawks hung overhead.There was all the time in the world
[08:04.13]A turtle slid into the water.
[08:07.37]The boy in the bow of my canoe slapped stones at birds with a simple sling,a rubber thong and leather pad
[08:15.54]He aimed brilliantly at moving targets,always,and always missed;the birds were out of range
[08:24.37]He stuffed his sling back in his shirt.I looked around.
[08:29.91]The lake and river waters are as opaque as rainforest leaves;they are veils,blinds,painted screens
[08:39.44]You see things only by their effects.I saw the shoreline water heave above a thrashing paichi
[08:48.33]an enormous black fish of these waters;one had been caught the previous week weighing 430pounds
[08:57.08]Piranha fish live in the lakes,and electric eels.I dangled my fingers in the water,figuring it would be worth it
[09:07.00]We would eat chicken that night in the village,togther with rice,onions and heaps of fruit.
[09:13.93]The sun would ring down,pulling darkness after it like a curtain.Twiling is short,andthe unseen birds of twilight wistful
[09:24.87]catching the heart.The two nuns in their dazzing white habits-the beauitful-boned young nun
[09:33.49]and the warm-faced old-would glide to the open cane-and-thatch schoolroom in darkness,
[09:39.89]and start the children singing.The children would sing in piping Spanish,high-pitched and pure
[09:48.15]they would sing "Nearer My God to Thee"in Quechua,very fast.As the children became excited by their own singing
[09:57.16]they left their log benches and swarmed around the nuns,hopping,smiling at us,everyone smiling
[10:05.26]the nuns'faces bursting in their cowls,and the clear-voiced children still singing,and the palm-leafed roofing stirred
[10:14.32]The Napo River:it is not out of the way.It is in the way,catching sunlight the way a cup catches poured water
[10:24.54]it is a bowl of sweet air,a basin of greenness,and of grace,and,it would seem,of peace.
[10:33.84]in the heart of Ecuadorian unspoiled admiration
[10:38.96]在…心中 厄瓜多尔人 改变的 钦佩
[10:44.08]out-of-the-way stump bankside thatch
[10:48.99]偏僻的 树桩 岸坡 茅草屋顶
[10:53.90]headwaters nightjar hush idly
[10:59.20]源头 欧夜鹰 安静下来 空闲地
[11:04.50]tarantula moth bulb firefly
[11:09.53]鸟蛛 蛀虫 电灯泡 萤火虫
[11:14.56]spatter illumine now...now... in(all)silence
[11:19.92]洒 照明 忽而…忽而 不出声地
[11:25.27]tangle foam trail loop
[11:30.13]使卷入 泡沫 蔓延 使成环状
[11:34.99]twine mute dissolve downstream
[11:39.98]缠绕 减弱 消散 向下游
[11:44.97]loose braid disembark slump
[11:49.15]放开 辫子 登陆 重重地坐下
[11:53.33]Spanish Quechua toe be dying to do sth/for sth
[12:00.25]西班牙 盖丘亚族 脚趾 非常想做某事
[12:07.17]get one's hands on take apart jeans volleyball
[12:12.45]抓到 分开 牛仔裤 排球
[12:17.72]spectacular fringe hollow in detail
[12:22.11]与众不同的 边界 洞穴 详细地
[12:26.50]tributary riverside guava opaque
[12:31.23]支流 河边的 番石榴 不透明的
[12:35.96]smear parrot flock dart
[12:41.18]弄脏 鹦鹉 群 迅疾地飞
[12:46.41]anaconda repute boa crocodile
[12:51.63]大水蟒 认为 大蟒蛇 鳄鱼
[12:56.86]bare strip sandbar freshly
[13:01.65]裸露 狭长的地域 沙洲 刚才
[13:06.44]paddle hammock explorer out of sight
[13:11.75]用桨划 吊床 探险家 看不见
[13:17.05]butterfly striped swath ant
[13:21.79]蝴蝶 有条纹的 长列 蚂蚁
[13:26.53]triangular fleet dinghy machete-hewn
[13:30.72]三角形的 舰队 小帆船 用大砍刀砍削而成
[13:34.92]oar shallow bamboo impale
[13:39.63]桨 浅滩 竹 刺穿
[13:44.35]lop decoration heron plod
[13:49.18]砍 装饰 苍鹭 慢而沉重地走
[13:54.01]kingfisher cuckoo clatter fuss
[13:58.73]翠鸟 杜鹃 喧闹地移动 忙乱
[14:03.44]bow slap sling thong
[14:07.53]船头 弹射 弹弓 皮带
[14:11.62]out of range rainforest blind shoreline
[14:18.11]够不到的 热带雨林 窗帘 海岸线
[14:24.60]thrash paichi piranha eel
[14:29.93]翻腾 巨滑舌鱼 水虎鱼 鳗
[14:35.26]dangle heap wistful nun
[14:39.31]摆动 一堆 愁苦的 修女
[14:43.36]dazzling glide cane high-pitched
[14:48.86]耀眼的 滑翔 藤条 音调高的
[14:58.17]你 成群地移动 跳跃 僧侣穿戴的头巾
[00:07.00]one of nature's most unspoiled places.
[00:11.23]She describes the beauty of the forest and her admiration for the people who live there.
[00:17.87]IN THE JUNGLE by Annle Dillard
[00:21.97]Like any out-of-the-way place,the Napo River in the Ecuadorian jungle seems real enough when you are there
[00:30.38]even central.Out of the way of what?I was sitting on a stump at the edge of a bankside palm-thatch village
[00:40.33]in the middle of the night,on the headwaters of the Amazon.
[00:44.77]Out of the way of human life,tenderness,or the glance of heaven?
[00:50.91]A nightjar in deep-leaved shadow called three long notes,and hushed.The men with me talked softly:
[01:00.21]three North Americans,four Ecuadorians who were showing us the jungle.We were holding cool drinks
[01:08.44]and idly watching a hand-sized tarantula seize moths that came to the lone bulb on the generator shed beside us
[01:17.24]It was February,the middle of summer.Green fireflies spattered lights across the air and illumined for seconds
[01:27.01]now here,now there,the pale trunks of enormous,solitary trees.
[01:33.20]Beneath us the brown Napo River was rising,in all silence;
[01:39.27]it coiled up the sandly bank and tangled its foam in vines that trailed from the forest and roots that looped the shore
[01:48.62]Each breath of night smelled sweet.Each star in Orion seemed to tremble and stir with my breath
[01:57.29]All at once,in the thatch house across the clearing behind us came the sound of a recorder,playing a tune
[02:06.01]that twined over the village clearing,muted our talk on the bankside,and wandered over the river,dissolving downstream
[02:15.60]This will do,I thought.This will do,for a weekend,or a season,or a home.
[02:24.35]Later that night I loosed my hair from its braids and combed it smooth not for myself,
[02:32.19]but so the village girls could play with it in the morning.
[02:36.58]We had disembarked at the village that afternoon,and I had slumped on some shaded steps,
[02:43.76]wishing I knew some Spanish or some Quechua so I could speak with the ring of little girls
[02:50.66]who were alterntely staring at me and smiling at their toes.I spoke anyway,and fooled with my hair,
[02:58.96]which they were obviously dying to get their hands on,and laughed,
[03:03.48]and soon they were all braiding my hair,all five of them,
[03:08.47]all fifty fingers,all my hair,even my bangs.
[03:13.25]And then they took it apart and did it again,laughing,and teaching me Spanish nouns,
[03:20.18]and meeting my eyes and each other's with open delight,while their small brothers in blue jeans
[03:27.33]climbed down from the trees and began kicking a volleyball around with one of the North American men.
[03:34.47]Now,as I combed my hair in the little tent,another of the men,a free-lance writer from Manhattan
[03:42.77]was talking quietly.He was telling us the tale of his life,describing his work in Hollywood,his apartment in Manhattan
[03:52.62]his house in Paris…It makes me wonder,"he said,"what I'm doing in a tent under a tree in the village of Pompeya
[04:02.10]on the Napo River,in the jungle of Ecuador."After a pause he added,"It makes me wonder why I'm going back.
[04:13.02]The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything
[04:20.68]It is simply to see what is there.We are here on the planet only once,and might as well get a feel for the place
[04:30.08]We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life is lived,
[04:35.04]for the Amazon basin,which covers half a continent,
[04:39.59]and for the life that-there,like anywhere else-is always and necessarily lived in detail:
[04:46.93]on the tributaries,inthe riverside villages,sucking this particular white-fleshed guava in this particular pattern of shade
[04:56.36]What is there is interesting.The Napo River itself is wide and brown,opaque,
[05:04.09]and smeared with floating foam and branches from the jungle.Parrots in flocks dart in and out of the light
[05:13.63]Under the water in the river,unseen,are anacondas--
[05:18.93]which are reputed to take a few village toddlers every year-and water boas,crocodiles,and sweet-meated fish
[05:28.07]Low water bares gray strips of sandbar on which the natives build tiny palm-thatch shelters for overnight fishing trips
[05:36.77]You see these extraordinarily clean people(who bathe twice a day in the river,
[05:43.33]and whose straight black hair is always freshly washed)padding down the river in dugout canoes,hugging the banks
[05:52.16]Some of the Indians of this region,earlier in the century,used to sleep naked in hammocks.The nights are cold
[06:01.38]Gordon MacCreach,an American explore in these Amazon tributaies,
[06:07.26]reported that he was startled to hear the Indians get up at three in the morning.He was even more startled
[06:15.22]night after night,to hear them walk down to the river slowly,half asleep,and bathe in the water.
[06:23.45]Only later did he learn what they were doing:they were getting warm.
[06:28.57]The cold woke them;they warmed their skins in the river,
[06:34.06]which was always ninety degrees;then they returned to their hammocks and slept through the rest of the night
[06:42.00]When you are inside the jungle,away from the river,the trees vault out of sight.Butterflies,brightblue,striped
[06:52.11]or clear-winged,thread the jungle paths at eye levelAnd at your feet is a swant of ants bearing triangular bits of green leaf
[07:02.43]The ants with their leaves look like a wide fleet of sailing dinghies-but they don't quit.
[07:09.66]In either direction they wobble over the jungle floor as far as the eye can see .
[07:15.57]Long lakes shine in the jungle.We traveled one of these in dugout canoes,canoes paddled with machete-hewn oars
[07:25.49]or poled in the shallows with bamboo.Our part-Indian guide had cleared the path to the lake the day before
[07:33.98]when we walked the path we saw where he had impaled the lopped head of a boa,open-mouthed,
[07:41.22]on a pointed stick by the canoes,for decoration.
[07:45.58]This lake was wonderful.Herons plodded the shores,kingfishers and cuckoos clattered from sunlight to shade
[07:54.96]great turkey like birds fussed in dead branches,and hawks hung overhead.There was all the time in the world
[08:04.13]A turtle slid into the water.
[08:07.37]The boy in the bow of my canoe slapped stones at birds with a simple sling,a rubber thong and leather pad
[08:15.54]He aimed brilliantly at moving targets,always,and always missed;the birds were out of range
[08:24.37]He stuffed his sling back in his shirt.I looked around.
[08:29.91]The lake and river waters are as opaque as rainforest leaves;they are veils,blinds,painted screens
[08:39.44]You see things only by their effects.I saw the shoreline water heave above a thrashing paichi
[08:48.33]an enormous black fish of these waters;one had been caught the previous week weighing 430pounds
[08:57.08]Piranha fish live in the lakes,and electric eels.I dangled my fingers in the water,figuring it would be worth it
[09:07.00]We would eat chicken that night in the village,togther with rice,onions and heaps of fruit.
[09:13.93]The sun would ring down,pulling darkness after it like a curtain.Twiling is short,andthe unseen birds of twilight wistful
[09:24.87]catching the heart.The two nuns in their dazzing white habits-the beauitful-boned young nun
[09:33.49]and the warm-faced old-would glide to the open cane-and-thatch schoolroom in darkness,
[09:39.89]and start the children singing.The children would sing in piping Spanish,high-pitched and pure
[09:48.15]they would sing "Nearer My God to Thee"in Quechua,very fast.As the children became excited by their own singing
[09:57.16]they left their log benches and swarmed around the nuns,hopping,smiling at us,everyone smiling
[10:05.26]the nuns'faces bursting in their cowls,and the clear-voiced children still singing,and the palm-leafed roofing stirred
[10:14.32]The Napo River:it is not out of the way.It is in the way,catching sunlight the way a cup catches poured water
[10:24.54]it is a bowl of sweet air,a basin of greenness,and of grace,and,it would seem,of peace.
[10:33.84]in the heart of Ecuadorian unspoiled admiration
[10:38.96]在…心中 厄瓜多尔人 改变的 钦佩
[10:44.08]out-of-the-way stump bankside thatch
[10:48.99]偏僻的 树桩 岸坡 茅草屋顶
[10:53.90]headwaters nightjar hush idly
[10:59.20]源头 欧夜鹰 安静下来 空闲地
[11:04.50]tarantula moth bulb firefly
[11:09.53]鸟蛛 蛀虫 电灯泡 萤火虫
[11:14.56]spatter illumine now...now... in(all)silence
[11:19.92]洒 照明 忽而…忽而 不出声地
[11:25.27]tangle foam trail loop
[11:30.13]使卷入 泡沫 蔓延 使成环状
[11:34.99]twine mute dissolve downstream
[11:39.98]缠绕 减弱 消散 向下游
[11:44.97]loose braid disembark slump
[11:49.15]放开 辫子 登陆 重重地坐下
[11:53.33]Spanish Quechua toe be dying to do sth/for sth
[12:00.25]西班牙 盖丘亚族 脚趾 非常想做某事
[12:07.17]get one's hands on take apart jeans volleyball
[12:12.45]抓到 分开 牛仔裤 排球
[12:17.72]spectacular fringe hollow in detail
[12:22.11]与众不同的 边界 洞穴 详细地
[12:26.50]tributary riverside guava opaque
[12:31.23]支流 河边的 番石榴 不透明的
[12:35.96]smear parrot flock dart
[12:41.18]弄脏 鹦鹉 群 迅疾地飞
[12:46.41]anaconda repute boa crocodile
[12:51.63]大水蟒 认为 大蟒蛇 鳄鱼
[12:56.86]bare strip sandbar freshly
[13:01.65]裸露 狭长的地域 沙洲 刚才
[13:06.44]paddle hammock explorer out of sight
[13:11.75]用桨划 吊床 探险家 看不见
[13:17.05]butterfly striped swath ant
[13:21.79]蝴蝶 有条纹的 长列 蚂蚁
[13:26.53]triangular fleet dinghy machete-hewn
[13:30.72]三角形的 舰队 小帆船 用大砍刀砍削而成
[13:34.92]oar shallow bamboo impale
[13:39.63]桨 浅滩 竹 刺穿
[13:44.35]lop decoration heron plod
[13:49.18]砍 装饰 苍鹭 慢而沉重地走
[13:54.01]kingfisher cuckoo clatter fuss
[13:58.73]翠鸟 杜鹃 喧闹地移动 忙乱
[14:03.44]bow slap sling thong
[14:07.53]船头 弹射 弹弓 皮带
[14:11.62]out of range rainforest blind shoreline
[14:18.11]够不到的 热带雨林 窗帘 海岸线
[14:24.60]thrash paichi piranha eel
[14:29.93]翻腾 巨滑舌鱼 水虎鱼 鳗
[14:35.26]dangle heap wistful nun
[14:39.31]摆动 一堆 愁苦的 修女
[14:43.36]dazzling glide cane high-pitched
[14:48.86]耀眼的 滑翔 藤条 音调高的
[14:58.17]你 成群地移动 跳跃 僧侣穿戴的头巾
