国家地理:加里曼丹岛的地底洞天(15)
One "day," with Mad Phil and a young caver named Ben, I explored along the left side of the chamber, searching for another entrance. Sarawak is so large that it contains many distinct precincts, and we climbed through at least half a dozen of them, passing from a pile of loose, muddy boulders into a maze of limestone with walls sharp as the face of a cheese grater.
一天“白天”，我和疯狂菲尔还有一个叫本的年轻洞穴探险者一起沿着洞穴左侧探索，寻找另一个入口。砂拉越洞非常宽阔，里面有许多界限分明的区域。我们爬过了至少六个区域，穿过了一堆松散泥泞的大卵石，进入了一个石灰岩迷宫，那里的岩壁就像奶酪磨碎器一样尖锐。
In the end, Eavis's team did not rack up more record-setting discoveries. Frank and Cookie—the mud-covered pair, drilling and banging at the bottom of a cave—never connected the Clearwater cave system to its neighbor that seemed so tantalizingly close. But the expedition succeeded in finding and mapping a respectable 14 miles of new passages.
最后，艾维斯的队伍并没有更多创纪录的发现。在洞穴底部钻眼、敲击的弗兰克和库奇二人组浑身是泥，也没有找到清水洞洞穴系统和与之非常相似的邻区之间的联系。但探险队还是成功发现并绘制出了足足14英里长的新通道的线路图。
A few weeks after I left Borneo, I spoke with Eavis, who had returned to Britain. He told me he was already planning a return trip to Gunung Mulu National Park to connect the caves himself.
在我离开婆罗洲几周后，艾维斯回到了英国。我和他在一起聊天，他告诉我他已经计划回到姆鲁国家公园，亲自把找寻那些洞穴之间的联系。
"We were extremely close," he said.
“我们已经很接近了，”他说。
He assured me it was not the pursuit of records, or the odd celebrity his sport sometimes bestows, that continued to drive him. He thought about the caves every day. His children knew well his stories from under the jungle.
他向我保证，不断驱使着他这样做的动力并不是对创纪录的追求，也不是这项运动是不是地给他带来的名气。他日思夜想着那些洞穴。他的孩子们熟知他在丛林之下的故事。
"My guess is that only 50 percent of the passages have been discovered," he said. "Wouldn't you just want to know? Mulu is this incredible place, and I want to know what's down there and see how all the pieces all fit together."
“我猜，人们只发现了一半的通道，”他说。“你难道不想知道吗？姆鲁是一个不可思议的地方，我想知道它下面有什么，看看各个分散的部分是如何拼凑成一个整体的。”
It was, he said, the labyrinth of a lifetime.
他说，这是一个千载难逢的迷宫。
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