国家地理:一次翻越世界屋脊的历史性旅行(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.

阿里热情的妻子库什娜玛玛什给我们烤了滚热的馕（一种烤饼）。我们把帐蓬扎在夫妻俩窄窄的草坪上，成排的白杨在微风中沙沙作响。古朴的瓦罕正在经历一场绿色革命，越来越多的林地遮蔽了曾经裸露的峡谷底部，一些瓦罕人吃上了自家种的第一个西红柿和南瓜。这要归功于气候变化，冰川融化越来越快的趋势使得灌溉更加容易，杏花开放已经提前了两个月。

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.

当然，这不可能持续下去，总有一天兴都库什山和帕米尔的冰川会渐渐消失，过去的饥饿将重新出现。但在目前这些阳光明媚的日子里，瓦罕众多不通公路的山谷就好像我此生一直在朝它走的地方，尽管我不知道那里。石板河里的石板在脚下像硬币一样排列，乌鸦在湛蓝的天空中盘旋。九月里，瓦罕东部吉尔吉斯族游牧民的高原牧场在火红的阳光照耀下像古老的琥珀。房子大小的岩石在贫瘠的山坡上像巨大的镜子一样闪闪发光，因为巨石的表面被早已消失的冰墙所磨光。

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.

冰河时代循环往复，下一次冰期将把我们城市的废墟推到低纬度地区。冰河时期将抹掉牧羊人阿里那脆弱林地的所有痕迹，并将很容易地抹去近40年前苏联留在瓦罕牧场的深深的坦克印迹，尽管这些车辙看起来仍然崭新。最后，另一个瓦罕民族会为面包而来打谷，来赶着牛碾小麦，我估计这得要3600年，那是一个完整的循环。