Swamp People
I woke up a few minutes after midnight, when the whining in my ear and the pinpricks of pain along my jaw brought to mind a word, glowing red like the jointed numbers on an alarm clock: mosquitoes.
午夜过后几分钟，我醒来，耳边的呜呜声和下巴的刺痛让我想起了一个词，它像闹钟上的数字一样发出红光：蚊子。
Without opening my eyes, I extended my arm to discover that the T-shirt I had hung across the backseat window had fallen askew, providing easy access for the insects now attending to my face.
我没有睁开眼睛，伸出手臂，发现挂在后座窗户上的 T 恤已经歪斜了，为那些现在在我脸上爬来爬去的昆虫提供了方便的地方。
A couple of inches away: the squeaking duress of a sleeping pad, the slap of a hand and a forehead.
几英寸之外：睡垫的吱吱声、手掌的拍打声和额头的声音。
Jeff’s flashlight illuminated the ceiling of the rented SUV, where mosquitoes bounced off the cloth, like astronauts in Zero-G.
杰夫的手电筒照亮了租来的SUV的天花板，蚊子从布料上弹开，就像零重力中的宇航员一样。
In a fit of frustration, I smashed one with my palm, painting a comet tail of blood across the beige upholstery.
一阵沮丧中，我用手掌砸碎了其中一个，在米色的内饰上画出了一道彗星般的血迹。
It took a beat before the absurdity of the moment set in, before we submitted to a tired laughter.
过了一会儿，这荒谬的时刻才开始，我们才屈服于疲惫的笑声。
“Okay, let me set up the tent,” I said, tumbling out of the car, my bare feet landing in the grass beside the moonlit picnic table where just hours ago we had shared delicacies plucked from a Jamaican bodega—spice bun and cheese, plantain chips, a bottle of cloudy gingerade—while a pair of egrets tussled in the flooded pinewoods behind the firepit, croaking like bullfrogs and unfurling their wings in gawky displays of dominance.
“好吧，让我搭起帐篷吧，”我说着，从车里翻滚下来，光着脚踩在月光下的野餐桌旁的草地上，几个小时前，我们还在那里分享了从牙买加杂货店采摘的美味佳肴——香料面包和奶酪、车前草片、一瓶浑浊的姜汁——而一对白鹭在火坑后面被水淹没的松树林里扭打着，像牛蛙一样呱呱叫着，展开身躯。他们的翅膀笨拙地展示着统治地位。
Around us, 700,000 acres of Florida’s Big Cypress Swamp had throbbed with cicadas.
在我们周围，佛罗里达州大柏树沼泽占地 70 万英亩的地方，蝉声四起。
Now the only sound was the faraway conversation of barred owls, asking each other the same question over and over.
现在唯一的声音是远处猫头鹰的谈话声，它们一遍又一遍地问彼此同样的问题。
It had been my idea to collapse the back seat instead of pitching the tent.
我的想法是折叠后座而不是搭帐篷。
The thought had given me a satisfying sense of conclusion, since we had slept that way on the first night of this 10-day journey, to escape the early autumn chill at a campground in Virginia, where the headlights of the Tesla Cybertruck at the next site had clicked on and off all night like a department-store Christmas tree.
这个想法给了我一个令人满意的结论，因为我们在这十天旅程的第一个晚上就是这样睡的，为了躲避弗吉尼亚州一个露营地初秋的寒冷，下一个地点的特斯拉赛博卡车的车头灯整夜都在闪烁，就像百货公司的圣诞树一样。
Since then we had done something I had long dreamed of: We’d visited all five of the East Coast’s largest, most legendary swamps in one languid road trip, spending entire days in clammy hiking boots and cheap borrowed kayaks.
从那时起，我们做了一件我一直梦想的事情：在一次慵懒的公路旅行中，我们参观了东海岸所有五个最大、最具传奇色彩的沼泽，一整天都穿着湿冷的登山靴和廉价借来的皮划艇。
I was already nostalgic for it.
我已经很怀念它了。
Tomorrow, I knew, we would check into the fancy Miami hotel I had chosen to celebrate my 40th birthday, and we would be transformed into different people.
我知道，明天，我们将入住我为庆祝 40 岁生日而选择的豪华迈阿密酒店，我们将变成不同的人。
People who hung their shirts on clothes hangers and went for purposeful runs and checked the latest presidential polls.
人们把衬衫挂在衣架上，有目的地跑步，查看最新的总统民意调查。
I liked those people well enough, but I would miss us, the swamp people.
我很喜欢那些人，但我会想念我们，沼泽人民。
What does it mean to love a swamp?
爱沼泽意味着什么？
A few years ago, I found myself strangely but powerfully drawn to dark, sodden landscapes, squinting at maps to find them: Marshes.
几年前，我发现自己奇怪但强烈地被黑暗、潮湿的风景所吸引，眯着眼睛看地图寻找它们：沼泽。
Bogs.
沼泽。
Bayous.
贝尤斯。
Fens.
芬斯。
And most of all swamps.
最重要的是沼泽。
When I moved from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic, I was delighted to find that the land here doesn’t end so much as crumble like a piece of day-old cornbread, giving way to those squishy, squelchy in-between places: not quite land, not quite water.
当我从中西部搬到大西洋中部时，我很高兴地发现这里的土地并没有像一块放了一天的玉米面包那样崩溃，取而代之的是那些湿软的、嘎吱作响的中间地方：不完全是陆地，也不完全是水。
These places called to me.
这些地方在召唤我。
Driving by, I craned at them like they were car wrecks.
开车经过时，我伸长脖子看着它们，就像它们是汽车残骸一样。
I coveted them like they were glassy black gems.
我对它们垂涎欲滴，就像它们是光滑的黑色宝石一样。
I could feel my bare feet plunge into their cold water as I crossed the threshold from tidy civilization to tangled wilderness.
当我从整洁的文明世界跨入混乱的荒野时，我能感觉到我的赤脚陷入了冰冷的水中。
Alice through the looking glass; Lucy in the wardrobe.
爱丽丝透过镜子；露西在衣柜里。
What was going on with me, I wondered.
我想知道我到底怎么了。
Was I depressed?
我很沮丧吗？
Vitamin-deficient?
缺乏维生素？
Had the screens I stare at all day finally broken my brain?
难道我整天盯着的屏幕终于把我的脑子弄坏了吗？
On a scale from gamer to Girl Scout, I am firmly outdoorsy—but swamps?
从游戏玩家到女童子军，我都非常喜欢户外活动，但是沼泽呢？
Why swamps?
为什么是沼泽？
They don’t confront us like mountains, comfort us like oceans, or envelop us like forests; they don’t seem to want to have anything to do with us at all.
它们不像高山那样面对我们，不像海洋那样安慰我们，也不像森林那样包围我们；它们是我们的力量。他们似乎根本不想与我们有任何关系。
Swamps hide.
沼泽隐藏。
Swamps demur.
沼泽提出异议。
“To love a swamp .
“去爱一片沼泽。
.
。
.
。
is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of mud and scurries along the damp edges of what is most commonly praised,” writes Barbara Hurd in Stirring the Mud, one of perhaps five books that comprises the entire swamp-appreciation genre.*
芭芭拉·赫德（Barbara Hurd）在《搅动泥浆》（Stirring the Mud）中写道，这本书是构成整个沼泽欣赏流派的五本书之一。*
Most people, of course, do not love mud or things that scurry.
当然，大多数人不喜欢泥土或乱窜的东西。
They do not love swamps.
他们不喜欢沼泽。
In fact, most people hate swamps.
事实上，大多数人讨厌沼泽。
For much of human history, landscapes of standing, sulfurous water were thought to be the province of ghosts, monsters, and criminals, the font of ravaging diseases.
在人类历史的大部分时间里，静止的硫磺水景观被认为是鬼魂、怪物和罪犯的领地，是肆虐疾病的源头。
In the American imagination, swamps were something far worse: barriers to progress—dfficult to exploit, unproductive, and unprofitable.
在美国人的想象中，沼泽的情况要糟糕得多：它是进步的障碍——难以开发、生产力低下、无利可图。
Most people, of course, do not love mud or things that scurry.
当然，大多数人不喜欢泥土或乱窜的东西。
They do not love swamps.
他们不喜欢沼泽。
In fact, most people hate swamps.
事实上，大多数人讨厌沼泽。
When Europeans arrived, about a third of what became the United States was wetland.
当欧洲人到达时，美国的面积大约有三分之一是湿地。
Two hundred years later, in 1849, Congress passed the first of three Swamp Land Acts.
200 年后的 1849 年，国会通过了三项《沼泽地法案》中的第一项。
By 1860, they would ultimately cede 65 million acres of them—together the size of the United Kingdom—to 14 states on the condition they would be drained and made farmable.
到 1860 年，他们最终将 6500 万英亩土地（相当于英国的面积）割让给 14 个州，条件是排干这些土地并使其可耕种。
To accomplish this, the states often turned over their new land to large timber operations for a few pennies per acre, or for no pennies at all.
为了实现这一目标，各州经常将他们的新土地移交给大型木材经营者，每英亩几美分，或者根本不花任何美分。
It was, according to one environmental historian, “arguably the greatest blow ever struck by the European Americans at the continent’s biodiversity.”
一位环境历史学家表示，“这可以说是欧洲裔美国人对非洲大陆生物多样性造成的最大打击。”
And that was just the start.
这只是开始。
Today, more than half of the country’s soggy spaces have been lost, plowed into agricultural fields or pinned under expressways.
如今，该国一半以上的潮湿空间已经消失，被耕作农田或被压在高速公路下。
Each year, the United States loses about 60,000 acres of wetlands, and along with them go the myriad benefits they provide, like wildlife habitat, water purification, flood control, and carbon sequestration.
美国每年失去约 60,000 英亩的湿地，湿地带来的无数好处也随之消失，例如野生动物栖息地、水净化、防洪和碳封存。
But here’s the thing about swamps: They don’t go down easy.
但沼泽的特点是：它们不会轻易消失。
Swamps don’t protest, they insist.
他们坚持认为，沼泽不会抗议。
When pioneers in my home state of Ohio drained the Great Black Swamp, the morass returned every spring, seeping up from farm fields like a poltergeist.
当我的家乡俄亥俄州的拓荒者排干大黑沼泽时，沼泽每年春天都会回来，像恶鬼一样从农田里渗出来。
Today—despite all the tiles, trenches, pumps, and canals of the last four centuries—some of the country’s gnarliest swamps still bleed down the East Coast, like a string of muddy pearls.
如今，尽管过去四个世纪里出现了所有的瓷砖、沟渠、水泵和运河，但这个国家一些最粗糙的沼泽仍然沿着东海岸流淌，就像一串浑浊的珍珠。
For years, they beckoned me.
多年来，他们一直在向我招手。
But here’s the thing about swamps: They don’t go down easy.
但沼泽的特点是：它们不会轻易消失。
Swamps don’t protest, they insist.
他们坚持认为，沼泽不会抗议。
As I approached my 40th birthday, I began to scratch at my swampy compulsion, wondering what I might find beneath it.
当我临近 40 岁生日时，我开始挠挠我那沼泽般的冲动，想知道我能在它下面发现什么。
Notes for living perhaps?
也许是生活笔记？
Instructions for how to be a human in the Anthropocene, resilient in the face of so much outrageous existential terror?
如何在人类世成为一个人，在面对如此多令人发指的存在主义恐怖时保持韧性？
Or maybe what I needed was some kind of middle-aged mirror.
或者也许我需要的是某种中年镜子。
At that pivotal moment equidistant from birth and death, was I to crawl into nature’s womb-tomb to recall the muck from which I came and to which I would one day return?
在那个与出生和死亡等距的关键时刻，我是否要爬进大自然的子宫坟墓，回忆起我来自的淤泥，有一天我将回到那里？
On a milestone birthday when you’re supposed to book a beach cabana or conquer the tallest summit you can find, what if I were to rent an oversized vehicle, force my beloved into the passenger seat, and slink into these swamps instead?
在一个具有里程碑意义的生日那天，当你应该预订一个海滩小屋或征服你能找到的最高的山峰时，如果我租一辆超大车辆，强迫我心爱的人坐在乘客座位上，然后溜进这些沼泽呢？
Would it change me?
它会改变我吗？
Did I need to be changed?
我需要改变吗？
“Swamps .
“沼泽。
.
。
.
。
are places of transition and wild growth, breeding grounds, experimental labs,” Hurd surmises.
是过渡和野生生长的地方、繁殖地、实验实验室，”赫德推测。
“Humans who wander there are often on the brink of becoming something else, or someone else.”
“在那里徘徊的人常常处于成为其他人或其他人的边缘。”
What did it mean to love a swamp?
爱沼泽意味着什么？
I really wanted to know.
我真的很想知道。
Our trip began on a pumpkin-spice day in October, all vivid blue skies and eddies of burning red leaves.
我们的旅行是在十月的南瓜香料日开始的，天空蔚蓝，树叶燃烧，形成漩涡。
The boardwalks that traversed New Jersey’s Great Swamp were wreathed with wildflowers; chipmunks raced beneath the slats.
穿过新泽西州大沼泽的木板路开满了野花。花栗鼠在板条下奔跑。
Before us lay a mosaic of wet and dry habitats, where vast legions of shrubs bowed beneath towering parapets of hardwood.
我们面前是一片潮湿和干燥的栖息地，巨大的灌木丛在高耸的硬木护墙下弯曲。
The air was warm and musky.
空气温暖而充满麝香。
Only 30 miles from Times Square, the Great Swamp is an unlikely survivor from the last Ice Age, when the retreating Wisconsin Glacier etched a 300-square-mile gash in what is now New Jersey, like an ice cream scoop moving through soft serve.
大沼泽距时代广场仅 30 英里，不太可能是上一个冰河时代的幸存者，当时威斯康星州冰川的退缩在现在的新泽西州留下了 300 平方英里的伤口，就像冰淇淋勺在软冰淇淋中移动一样。
In the centuries since the land was taken from the Lenape, the vast majority of it has been logged, drained, farmed, and platted into neighborhoods.
自从勒纳佩人的土地被夺走以来的几个世纪里，绝大多数土地都被砍伐、排干、耕种并辟为社区。
By the middle of the last century, only about 12 square miles remained, and even they were under threat.
到上世纪中叶，只剩下约12平方英里，甚至连它们也受到威胁。
As I admired a raft of purple ironweed, I tried to imagine, in its place, a Cinnabon, a Hudson News, a 777 thundering down a two-mile runway.
当我欣赏一排紫色铁草时，我试图想象在它的位置上有一架 Cinnabon 飞机、一架 Hudson News 飞机、一架 777 飞机在两英里长的跑道上轰鸣而过。
In 1959, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had targeted the land I was standing on for a massive international airport, the largest ever envisioned.
1959 年，纽约和新泽西港务局瞄准了我所在的土地，修建一座大型国际机场，这是有史以来最大的机场。
It was the dawn of the Jet Age, the era of Robert Moses and Austin Tobin, and the metro’s three airports were backlogged and traffic-jammed.
那是喷气机时代的黎明，罗伯特·摩西和奥斯汀·托宾的时代，地铁的三个机场积压和交通拥堵。
Planes were falling out of the sky at an alarming rate.
飞机以惊人的速度从天而降。
Developers saw building on the last of the Great Swamp as something of a win-win; not only would the region get a futuristic new airport, but it would also rid itself of an ugly cesspool that, despite years of back-breaking effort, would not take the hint.
开发商认为在最后一片大沼泽上建造建筑是双赢的。该地区不仅会得到一个未来派的新机场，而且还将摆脱一个丑陋的污水池，尽管多年来付出了艰苦的努力，但它仍然不接受暗示。
At the time, there was nothing particularly egregious about this plan.
当时，这个计划并没有什么特别令人震惊的地方。
Wetlands—flat, vast, unloved—provided the canvas for pretty much every major airport along the Eastern Seaboard.
湿地平坦、广阔、无人问津，为东海岸几乎所有主要机场提供了场地。
The Great Swamp would have been too if it weren’t for a woman named Helen Fenske, a stay-at-home mom who lived with her family on the edge of the swamp, where her children caught frogs, played hide and seek, and spent whole afternoons lost in its expanse.
如果没有一位名叫海伦·芬斯克 (Helen Fenske) 的女士，大沼泽也会如此。海伦·芬斯克是一位全职妈妈，她和家人住在沼泽边缘，她的孩子们在那里抓青蛙，玩捉迷藏，整个下午都在这片广阔的沼泽中迷失。
A few months after plans for the airport were announced, the newly formed Great Swamp Committee gathered around Fenske’s kitchen table and planned a PR campaign on the land’s behalf.
机场计划宣布几个月后，新成立的大沼泽委员会聚集在芬斯克的餐桌旁，代表这片土地计划开展公关活动。
Over the next five years—in a time before the Clean Water, Clean Air, or Endangered Species Acts, before Rachel Carson warned Americans of a looming silent spring—they lugged slide projectors from church basements to Rotary Club luncheons, educating the community about the ecological benefits of swamps.Wetlands harbor 40 percent of Earth’s plant and animal species and as much as 30 percent of its sequestered carbon—not to mention a significant portion of humanity’s accessible freshwater.
在接下来的五年里，在《清洁水法》、《清洁空气法》或《濒危物种法案》出台之前，在雷切尔·卡森警告美国人即将到来的寂静春天之前，他们把幻灯片投影仪从教堂地下室拖到扶轮社的午餐会上，向社区宣传沼泽的生态效益。湿地蕴藏着地球上 40% 的动植物物种以及多达 30% 的固碳——更不用说地球上的很大一部分碳了。人类可获得的淡水。
These landscapes harness floodwaters, stabilize shorelines, and atone for so many of our sins, sponging up road salts, farm fertilizers, heavy metals, and pesticides.
这些景观利用了洪水，稳定了海岸线，并弥补了我们的许多罪过，吸收了路盐、农用肥料、重金属和杀虫剂。
According to the EPA, South Carolina’s Congaree Swamp removes as much pollution each year as a $5 million wastewater treatment facility.
据美国环保局 (EPA) 称，南卡罗来纳州康加里沼泽每年消除的污染相当于一座价值 500 万美元的废水处理设施。
“Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps,” Henry David Thoreau wrote.
亨利·大卫·梭罗写道：“对我来说，希望和未来不在草坪和耕地，也不在城镇和城市，而在不透水、颤抖的沼泽里。”
“There is the strength, the marrow, of nature.”
“这是自然的力量、本质。”
Eventually, Fenske’s group and their slides made it all the way to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and in 1960, the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was established.
最终，芬斯克的团队和他们的幻灯片一路到达了美国鱼类和野生动物管理局，并于 1960 年建立了大沼泽国家野生动物保护区。
Eight years later, it would become the first wilderness area designated under the Wilderness Act of 1964, which sought to protect landscapes “where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
八年后，这里成为根据 1964 年《荒野法案》指定的第一个荒野地区，该法案旨在保护“人类本身只是访客而不留下来的景观”。
As we walked reverently beneath a cathedral of white oak and red maple, I wondered if Fenske and her friends were surprised by their own success, by the audacious suggestion that a swamp might be inherently valuable, that a wilderness where man himself is a visitor could exist in the New Jersey exurbs.
当我们虔诚地走在白橡木和红枫树下的大教堂下时，我想知道芬斯克和她的朋友们是否对自己的成功感到惊讶，对沼泽可能具有内在价值的大胆建议感到惊讶，新泽西郊区可能存在人类自己作为游客的荒野。
To be sure, there’s something radical about a nearly 8,000-acre swamp enduring in one of the wealthiest counties in America, surrounded by colonial homes, private stables, and a sprawling golf course belonging to our self-proclaimed swamp-drainer-in-chief.
可以肯定的是，美国最富有的县之一的近 8,000 英亩的沼泽地里有一些激进的东西，周围是殖民时期的房屋、私人马厩和一个属于我们自称的沼泽排水总管的庞大高尔夫球场。
Today, the Great Swamp feels patchy and wounded, like a lamb that’s been shorn a little too closely; its vistas are full of powerlines and planes approaching and departing Newark.
如今，大沼泽给人的感觉是斑驳的、受伤的，就像一只被剪得太近的羔羊一样。景色中充满了进出纽瓦克的电线和飞机。
It’s not exactly Eden, but its existence still seems divine.
它并不完全是伊甸园，但它的存在似乎仍然是神圣的。
And there was ample, urgent life to be found: herons stalking the shoreline, pizza-sized snapping turtles commuting between waterlilies, a rat snake slowly devouring a wood frog despite its intermittent shrieks.
这里还发现了丰富而紧迫的生命：苍鹭在海岸线上徘徊，比萨饼大小的鳄龟在睡莲之间穿梭，老鼠蛇尽管发出间歇性的尖叫，但仍在缓慢地吞噬一只林蛙。
By now you’ve heard a bunch of stories like Fenske’s, of an average person waging an unlikely war over an endangered scrap of land and winning.
到目前为止，你已经听过很多像芬斯克这样的故事，讲述的是一个普通人为一块濒临灭绝的土地发动了一场不太可能的战争并取得胜利。
But consider for a moment the unique cultural challenges—both then and today—of trying to convince people to love a swamp.
但请考虑一下当时和今天试图说服人们热爱沼泽所面临的独特文化挑战。
It is true that we have defiled every landscape imaginable in this country, but few have we defamed like a swamp.
确实，我们已经玷污了这个国家每一个可以想象到的风景，但很少有像沼泽那样被我们玷污的。
After eating lunch in the platonic ideal of a New Jersey diner, where the menu was the size of a science-fair posterboard, we settled back onto the southbound turnpike and into a Stephen King audiobook.
在新泽西州一家柏拉图式的理想餐厅（菜单有科学博览会海报板大小）吃完午餐后，我们回到南行收费公路上，听着史蒂芬·金的有声读物。
In it, a 9-year-old protagonist finds herself hopelessly lost in a “gross, gross, gross” swamp, hounded by biting flies and haunted by a wasp-faced predator she nicknames “God of the Lost.”
影片中，一位 9 岁的主角发现自己绝望地迷失在一片“恶心、恶心、恶心”的沼泽中，被叮咬的苍蝇追赶，并被她戏称为“迷失之神”的黄蜂脸掠食者困扰。
In that moment, the storyline felt uncanny, but this swampy motif long ago solidified into cliché.
在那一刻，故事情节感觉不可思议，但这种沼泽主题早已凝固成陈词滥调。
If you want to know how deeply engrained our ecological bias is, simply open a book and behold: the “Slough of Despond” that soaks through the pages of A Pilgrim’s Progress, the “pestilent and mystic vapor” that surrounds Edgar Allan Poe’s Usher mansion.
如果你想知道我们的生态偏见有多根深蒂固，只需打开一本书，看看：《天路历程》中浸透的“绝望的沼泽”，埃德加·爱伦·坡的厄舍宅邸周围弥漫着“瘟疫而神秘的蒸汽”。
It is true that we have defiled every landscape imaginable in this country, but few have we defamed like a swamp.
确实，我们已经玷污了这个国家每一个可以想象到的风景，但很少有像沼泽那样被我们玷污的。
Similarly, when swamps show up on-screen, it’s almost always bad news.
同样，当屏幕上出现沼泽时，这几乎总是坏消息。
“These are places the characters do not want to be in, that they want to get out of,” says Jack Zinnen, a wetland ecologist at the University of Illinois.
伊利诺伊大学湿地生态学家杰克·辛宁 (Jack Zinnen) 表示：“这些地方是角色们不想进入的地方，他们想要离开。”
“The wetland is a place of hardship, danger, or discomfort.”
“湿地是一个充满艰辛、危险或不适的地方。”
This isn’t just Zinnen’s personal observation, but the conclusion of a recent study in which he and three colleagues analyze the portrayal of wetlands in 163 films released since 1980.
这不仅仅是 Zinnen 的个人观察，也是他和三位同事最近进行的一项研究的结论，该研究分析了 1980 年以来上映的 163 部电影中对湿地的描绘。
Think: the Fire Swamp in The Princess Bride, the dead marshes in The Lord of the Rings.
想想：《公主新娘》中的火焰沼泽，《指环王》中的死亡沼泽。
Or maybe all you can think about right now is Artax, the ethereal white horse in The NeverEnding Story who sank slowly into the Swamps of Sadness, while his young rider watched helplessly.
或许你现在能想到的只是阿尔塔克斯，《永无止境的故事》中那匹飘逸的白马，它慢慢地沉入悲伤的沼泽，而他年轻的骑手则无助地看着。
It was a sequence so gutting, so viscerally wrenching it spawned a persistent rumor that the horse had actually been killed to pull it off.
这一幕如此令人心碎，如此令人内心痛苦，以至于一直有谣言说这匹马实际上是被杀的。
“That scene got burned into my brain,” Zinnen told me.
“那个场景深深地印在了我的脑海里，”齐南告诉我。
Years later it was, in part, the impetus for his study, which ultimately found that in about half of the films, wetlands were associated with suffering, misery, or death.
多年后，这在一定程度上成为了他研究的动力，他的研究最终发现，在大约一半的电影中，湿地与痛苦、痛苦或死亡有关。
In other titles, they served as settings of challenge or conflict for the protagonist, an emotional low point, a despairing place where the options were a) perish or b) persevere—and certainly not c) enjoy or d) have fun.
在其他游戏中，它们为主角提供了挑战或冲突的环境，情绪低谷，绝望的地方，选择是a）灭亡或b）坚持——当然不是c）享受或d）享受乐趣。
These on-screen portrayals reverberate in the real world.
这些银幕上的描绘在现实世界中产生了反响。
“Deep in our gut we associate swamps with danger, disgust, difference, and hostility,” says Zinnen.
“在我们的内心深处，我们将沼泽与危险、厌恶、差异和敌意联系在一起，”辛宁说。
In November 1894, Robert Frost arrived at the Great Dismal Swamp with a death wish.
1894年11月，罗伯特·弗罗斯特怀着求死之心来到了大惨淡沼泽。
His high school sweetheart had rebuffed a marriage proposal and the book of poetry that accompanied it, so the 20-year-old took a train from Boston to New York City and a Merchant Marine ship from New York City to Norfolk, where he disembarked, jettisoned most of his belongings, and pointed his shoes toward the immense quagmire that seeps across the Virginia-North Carolina state line like one of Salvador Dali’s melting clocks.
他高中时的恋人拒绝了求婚和与之相伴的诗集，因此这位 20 岁的年轻人从波士顿乘坐火车前往纽约，又从纽约乘坐商船前往诺福克，在那里他下船，扔掉了大部分物品，并把鞋子指向了渗入弗吉尼亚州和北卡罗来纳州边界的巨大泥潭，就像萨尔瓦多·达利融化的时钟一样。
His very own Swamps of Sadness, perfect for a poetic suicide.
他自己的悲伤沼泽，非常适合诗意的自杀。
But something Frost found within its forbidding boundaries apparently made him reconsider.
但弗罗斯特在其令人生畏的界限内发现的一些东西显然让他重新考虑。
One hundred and thirty years later, as we rambled around the swamp, I wondered what bit of splendor it was.
一百三十年后，当我们在沼泽地漫步时，我想知道那是怎样的辉煌。
We arrived at the Great Dismal on a Friday afternoon, delivered by country lanes framed with heaps of drying peanuts and sun-warped mailboxes, finding the visitors’ center abandoned for the weekend.
星期五下午，我们到达了大惨淡村，我们沿着乡间小道抵达，周围堆满了干花生和被太阳晒得扭曲的邮箱，发现游客中心已经被废弃了周末。
The brochure beside its locked doors called the 112,000 acres of forested wetland “some of the most important wildlife habitat in the mid-Atlantic region”; Dismal Swamp memoirist Bland Simpson calls it a “jungled nowhere.”
锁着的门旁边的小册子称这片占地 112,000 英亩的森林湿地是“大西洋中部地区最重要的野生动物栖息地之一”；惨淡沼泽回忆录作家布兰德·辛普森称其为“丛林无处”。
“Jungled” certainly felt right.
“丛林”感觉当然是对的。
As we walked alongside one of the dozens of drainage ditches that have been dug to siphon the swamp over the years (including some authorized by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; swamp-draining seems to be a heritable trait among US presidents), it was difficult to pick a place to rest our gaze.
当我们沿着多年来为虹吸沼泽而挖的数十条排水沟之一（其中一些是乔治·华盛顿和托马斯·杰斐逊授权的；沼泽排水似乎是美国总统的遗传特征）之一时，很难选择一个地方来休息我们的目光。
There were feathered things flitting in the understory and scaled things sliding off rocks and mossy things creeping over logs.
有羽毛的东西在林下飞舞，有鳞的东西从岩石上滑下来，长满苔藓的东西在原木上爬行。
Above, loblollies groaned, swollen persimmons nodded in a dry breeze.
头顶上，火炬树在呻吟，肿胀的柿子在干燥的微风中点头。
A claustrophobic wilderness—New Jersey this was not.
新泽西州不是幽闭恐怖的荒野。
While it was difficult to imagine anyone coming here with death on their mind, especially on a sun-drenched autumn day, for much of human history, swamps were essentially synonymous with death.
虽然很难想象有人带着死亡来到这里，尤其是在阳光普照的秋日，但在人类历史的大部分时间里，沼泽基本上就是死亡的代名词。
In the fifth century, the Greek physician Hippocrates suggested disease was caused by the noxious air that rose from putrefying organic matter in low-lying, soggy landscapes.
公元五世纪，希腊医生希波克拉底认为，疾病是由低洼、潮湿的地区腐烂的有机物产生的有毒空气引起的。
The miasma theory would dominate scientific thinking for the next millennia and a half, pinning the world’s most devastating plagues on its wet places—yellow fever, cholera, tuberculosis and malaria, known in Spanish as “paludismo,” and French as “paludisme,” from the Latin “palus,” for swamp.
瘴气理论将在接下来的几千年里主导科学思维，将世界上最具破坏性的瘟疫归咎于潮湿的地方——黄热病、霍乱、结核病和疟疾，西班牙语称为“paludismo”，法语称为“paludisme”，源自拉丁语“palus”，意为沼泽。
But the paradox of the swamp—of all swamps—is that, while surely a place of unpoliced decomposition, where insects feast on festering timber and vegetation liquifies slowly into peat, it is also a place of constant becoming, where fungi bloom greedily across grungy wood and gray water cradles bulging clouds of frog eggs.
但沼泽——所有沼泽——的悖论在于，虽然它确实是一个不受监管的腐烂之地，昆虫以腐烂的木材为食，植被慢慢液化成泥炭，但它也是一个不断变化的地方，真菌在肮脏的木材和灰色的水中贪婪地生长，摇篮里浮现出青蛙卵云。
No one knows why Frost didn’t commit suicide in the swamp; instead he found a way to keep going.
没有人知道为什么弗罗斯特没有在沼泽里自杀；相反，他找到了继续前进的方法。
Lots of humans here have done the same thing.
这里的很多人都做过同样的事情。
According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, as many as 50,000 Maroons lived in the Great Dismal Swamp between European contact and the Civil War, whole generations and elaborate societies of Native Americans, fugitive slaves, and indentured servants.
据美国鱼类和野生动物管理局称，从欧洲接触到内战期间，多达 50,000 名马龙人生活在大惨淡沼泽中，他们是美洲原住民、逃亡奴隶和契约仆人的世世代代和复杂的社会。
The poison ivy and water moccasins and oppressive humidity far kinder than the white people who encircled it.
毒藤、水鹿皮鞋和压抑的湿气比周围的白人要友善得多。
“These were the warring truths of this land,” writes journalist Lex Pryor, “its cruelties became inseparable from its possibilities.”
记者莱克斯·普赖尔（Lex Pryor）写道：“这些都是这片土地上相互矛盾的事实，它的残酷与它的可能性密不可分。”
“I have made my bed with the leviathan, among the reeds and the rushes.
“我在芦苇丛和灯心草丛中与利维坦一起铺了床。
I have found the alligators and the snakes better neighbors than Christians,” says Dred, the titular character of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.
我发现鳄鱼和蛇比基督徒是更好的邻居，”哈里特·比彻·斯托的《德雷德：大荒凉沼泽的故事》中的主角德雷德说道。
I thought of this, standing in a swarm of mosquitoes on the precipice of the swamp’s arresting Lake Drummond, which occupies the middle of the refuge like the pit of a stone fruit, something definite in a landscape of knots and brambles.
当我站在沼泽引人注目的德拉蒙德湖悬崖上的一群蚊子中时，我想到了这一点。德拉蒙德湖占据了避难所的中央，就像核果的果核，在结节和荆棘丛生的风景中是一种明确的东西。
Here, orange shafts of late afternoon sunlight set fire to the phragmites while a jagged row of geese flew overhead.
在这里，午后的橙色阳光点燃了芦苇，而一排参差不齐的鹅从头顶飞过。
Woodpeckers rapped; frogs burped.
啄木鸟敲击；青蛙打嗝了。
Though I couldn’t see them, around me I knew were wet-footed black bears slinking silently through the undergrowth like the humans who once found their own kind of freedom in this jungled nowhere.
虽然我看不到它们，但我知道在我周围有湿脚的黑熊在灌木丛中悄悄地潜行，就像曾经在这片荒无人烟的丛林中找到自己的自由的人类一样。
Logging reduced the swamp to only a tenth of its original size before it became a refuge, and for a while, it seemed, the human history of the land had been dragged away with the timber.
在成为避难所之前，伐木使沼泽的面积只剩下原来的十分之一，有一段时间，这片土地的人类历史似乎已经随着木材一起被拖走了。
But recently, a coalition of Native and Maroon descendants has pushed for new and commemorative trail names, interpretive signage, and soon, perhaps, a National Heritage Site designation.
但最近，原住民和栗色后裔的联盟推动了新的、具有纪念意义的小径名称、解释性标牌，也许很快就会被指定为国家遗产地。
In this way, the swamp might become not just an ecological sanctuary, but a monument to the resistance it sustained and the people it saved.
这样，沼泽可能不仅成为一个生态保护区，而且成为了它所坚持的抵抗和它所拯救的人民的纪念碑。
A satisfying reversal: swamp as elixir, swamp as a giver of life.
一个令人满意的逆转：沼泽是长生不老药，沼泽是生命的给予者。
A satisfying reversal: swamp as elixir, swamp as a giver of life.
一个令人满意的逆转：沼泽是长生不老药，沼泽是生命的给予者。
Maybe then the Great Dismal would be known, as Simpson sees it and as I did on that Friday in October, “not so much [as] the indomitable sorrow it suggests as the incalculable and evolving beauty that it is.”
也许到那时，正如辛普森和我在十月的那个星期五所看到的那样，“大悲惨”“与其说是它所暗示的不屈不挠的悲伤，不如说是它所蕴含的不可估量的、不断变化的美丽。”
From Great Dismal, we plunged south toward the Carolinas, where the billboards turned into sermons and the soil turned into sand and the sky hardened into chalk.
从大惨淡地出发，我们向南直奔卡罗莱纳州，那里的广告牌变成了布道，土壤变成了沙子，天空变成了粉笔。
We drove through towns called Tarheel and Pinetops, where the gas stations smelled like fried liver and the drive-through menus were devoted entirely to biscuits.
我们开车穿过塔希尔（Tarheel）和派恩托普斯（Pinetops）两个城镇，那里的加油站闻起来像炸肝，汽车餐厅的菜单上全是饼干。
We drove across the state line and spun west—where swamps named Gum and Maple and Sparrow slithered under highway overpasses—and into counties that looked exactly like they did the last time I scowled at them, 20 years ago, from the driver’s side of a red Honda Civic with a crack in the windshield and a Radiohead sticker on the bumper.
我们开车穿过州界线，向西旋转——那里有名为“古姆”、“枫树”和“麻雀”的沼泽在高速公路立交桥下蜿蜒而行——进入了一些县，这些县的样子和我上次怒视县城时一模一样，那是20年前，当时我坐在一辆红色本田思域的驾驶座上，挡风玻璃上有一条裂缝，保险杠上贴着Radiohead的贴纸。
I’ve often wondered how much happier I would have been as a young adult had I just discovered the simple and exhausting joy of walking around outside a little earlier.
我常常想，如果我早点发现在外面散步的简单而疲惫的乐趣，作为一个年轻的成年人，我会多快乐。
As it was, I found nothing redeemable about the South Carolina landscape.
事实上，我发现南卡罗来纳州的风景没有什么可弥补的。
Back then, the idea that I would one day embark on a weeks-long pilgrimage of East Coast swamps would have been as laughable as the idea that I would one day turn 40.
那时，一想到有一天我会踏上东海岸沼泽地为期一周的朝圣之旅，就像想到我有一天会年满 40 岁一样可笑。
(Forty!
（四十！
Ha!) Back then, Congaree was just a primeval-sounding place on the periphery of both my awareness and my college town, a word I kept seeing in the newspaper.
哈！）当时，康加里只是一个听起来很原始的地方，位于我的意识和我的大学城的边缘，这是我经常在报纸上看到的一个词。
That’s because in 2003, around the time I moved to Columbia, South Carolina, the Congaree Swamp National Monument, about 20 minutes outside city limits, was getting a major upgrade as a national park.
那是因为 2003 年，大约在我搬到南卡罗来纳州哥伦比亚的时候，距市区约 20 分钟路程的康加里沼泽国家纪念碑 (Congaree Swamp National Monument) 正在进行重大升级，成为国家公园。
But as the press releases went out and the signage went up for the brand-new Congaree National Park, one word was conspicuously absent.
但随着新闻稿的发布和全新康加里国家公园的标牌升起，有一个词明显缺席。
The official line was that the term “swamp” had been misleading, since technically the Congaree is a bottomland hardwood forest that often floods.
官方的说法是，“沼泽”一词具有误导性，因为从技术上讲，康加里是一片经常发生洪水的低地硬木森林。
But also?
但是也？
Technically?
从技术上讲？
A bottomland hardwood forest is a type of swamp.
低地阔叶林是沼泽的一种。
Of course this scientific hairsplitting misses the point entirely; the rewrite was a strategic rebranding, a bid for more visitors.
当然，这种科学吹毛求疵的说法完全没有抓住要点。此次改写是一次战略性品牌重塑，旨在吸引更多访客。
Add the words “national park” and drop the word “swamp” and all its murderous, miasmic implications, the thinking went, and the parking lot would burst with RVs.
加上“国家公园”这个词，去掉“沼泽”这个词及其所有凶残、瘴气的含义，人们的想法是，停车场就会挤满房车。
It wasn’t a bad plan.
这不是一个糟糕的计划。
In fact, it pretty much worked.
事实上，它非常有效。
“Unfortunately, I think the word swamp gave people an incomplete picture of what the Congaree is like,” the owner of a local canoe livery told The New York Times.
“不幸的是，我认为沼泽这个词让人们对康加里的情况有不完整的了解，”当地独木舟制服的老板告诉《纽约时报》。
“Now people here are actually proud of the place.”
“现在这里的人们实际上为这个地方感到自豪。”
“I used to be the loneliest ranger in town,” the park’s naturalist said.
“我曾经是镇上最孤独的护林员，”公园的博物学家说。
“Now the phones are ringing off the hook.”
“现在电话响个不停。”
But when we arrived on a Sunday morning, empty coffee cups rolling around the floorboards of the car, we had our choice of parking spots.
但当我们周日早上到达时，空咖啡杯在汽车地板上滚来滚去，我们可以选择停车位。
An hour later, we were somewhere in Congaree’s 26,000-acre, moss-draped backcountry, walking fast enough to evade the persistent mosquitoes but slow enough to stalk a lone black duck, cruising down one of the swamp’s many “guts,” the hundreds of channels that twist and turn through the woods like a top stitch, cinching together a patchwork of sloughs, ponds, and oxbow lakes that all rise and fall when the river floods about a dozen times a year.
一小时后，我们来到了康加里占地 26,000 英亩、布满青苔的偏远地区，走得足够快，足以躲避顽固的蚊子，但又足够慢，可以跟踪一只孤独的黑鸭，沿着沼泽的众多“内脏”之一巡游，数百条河道像明线一样穿过树林，将沼泽、池塘和牛轭湖拼凑在一起。当河流每年泛滥十几次时，所有这些都会起起落落。
Squishy, squelchy, a world in constant flux.
软软的，软软的，一个不断变化的世界。
Whatever you want to call it, Congaree—where the horizon goes missing for hours at a time and clutches of knobby cypress knees reach up from the mud like zombies—is unlike very few other places in the country, although that wasn’t always true.
不管你想怎么称呼它，康加里——那里的地平线一次消失几个小时，多节柏树的膝盖像僵尸一样从泥巴里伸出来——与这个国家很少有的地方不同，尽管情况并非总是如此。
Two hundred years ago, majestic bottomland forests like this one covered almost 30 million acres across the Southeastern United States.
200 年前，像这样的雄伟低地森林覆盖了美国东南部近 3000 万英亩的土地。
Today, 99 percent of them are gone.
如今，99% 的人都消失了。
Two hundred years ago, majestic bottomland forests like this one covered almost 30 million acres across the Southeastern United States.
200 年前，像这样的雄伟低地森林覆盖了美国东南部近 3000 万英亩的土地。
Today, 99 percent of them are gone.
如今，99% 的人都消失了。
I did visit the park during college, never straying far from the visitor-friendly boardwalk that spans the Congaree River’s tannin-dark water when it sweeps through the floodplain, carrying nourishment for some of the country’s most ancient, colossal trees.
我在大学期间确实参观过这个公园，从未远离过这条适合游客参观的木板路，这条木板路横跨康加里河，河水呈单宁暗色，流过洪泛区，为这个国家一些最古老、巨大的树木输送养分。
But late in a dry year, when the Congaree River was mostly abiding its boundaries, it was true that the place looked less like a swamp and more like a bottomland hardwood forest that floods a lot.
但在干旱的年份末，当康加里河基本遵守其边界时，这个地方看起来确实不太像沼泽，而更像是经常洪水泛滥的低地硬木森林。
Technically, a swamp is an area permanently saturated or covered in water that’s dominated primarily by woody vegetation, but to the average person, the word swamp is interchangeable with about a dozen others.
从技术上讲，沼泽是一个永久饱和或被水覆盖的区域，主要由木本植被为主，但对普通人来说，沼泽这个词可以与大约十几个其他词互换。
Bayou, bog, fen, floodplain, glade, lowland, marsh, mire, moor, morass, wet meadow, pocosin, polder, pothole, quagmire, slough, swale, swamp—there are hydrological, alluvial, and vegetative similarities and differences among all of these ecosystems, but until the middle of the last century, scientists had little reason to name them.
河口、沼泽、沼泽、漫滩、林间空地、低地、沼泽、泥沼、沼泽、沼泽、湿草甸、波科辛、圩田、坑洼、泥沼、泥沼、洼地、沼泽——所有这些生态系统之间存在水文、冲积和植被的相似性和差异，但直到上世纪中叶，科学家们还没有理由给它们命名。
During the environmental movement of the ’60s and ’70s, as newly enlightened lawmakers began drafting legislation concerning the development or preservation of these places, they needed guidance—where did these bodies of water begin and end?
在六十年代和七十年代的环境运动中，当新开明的立法者开始起草有关这些地方的开发或保护的立法时，他们需要指导——这些水体从哪里开始和结束？
Which ones were ecologically vital?
哪些对生态至关重要？
Which were worthy of protection?
哪些值得保护？
Instead of elucidating the tedious differences between, say, a bog (mossy, nutrient-lacking, fed by rainwater) and a fen (grassy, nutrient-rich, fed by groundwater), scientists began to lump them all together under the umbrella term “wetland,” which only seemed to inspire more confusion about what exactly should count as one.
科学家们并没有去阐明沼泽（长满苔藓，缺乏营养，由雨水滋养）和沼泽（长满青草，营养丰富，由地下水滋养）之间的繁琐区别，而是开始将它们统称为“湿地”，这似乎只会引发更多关于到底什么应该算作湿地的混乱。
Soon it seemed every state and federal agency had created its own definition, and the word would remain as slippery and ill-defined as the ecology it described, a problem that would dog the swamp and its wetland cousins for decades to come.
很快，似乎每个州和联邦机构都制定了自己的定义，而这个词仍然像它所描述的生态一样难以捉摸和定义不清，这个问题将在未来几十年内困扰沼泽及其湿地同类。
In 1972, Congress amended a law that eventually became known as the Clean Water Act, prohibiting the discharge of pollutants into the country’s “navigable waters,” which it defined as “the waters of the United States,” or WOTUS for short.
1972 年，国会修改了一项法律，最终被称为《清洁水法》，禁止向该国的“通航水域”排放污染物，该国将其定义为“美国水域”，简称 WOTUS。
Perhaps you can see the problem here.
也许你可以看到这里的问题。
Certainly, no one can argue that wetlands like swamps and bogs and fens aren’t waters of the United States, but, given that they come in all different sizes and shrink and swell and sometimes disappear altogether, they are not exactly places you could steer your powerboat.
当然，没有人可以说沼泽、沼泽和沼泽等湿地不是美国的水域，但是，考虑到它们的大小各不相同，收缩和膨胀，有时甚至完全消失，它们并不是你可以驾驶摩托艇的地方。
For years, developers sought to relax the Clean Water Act’s regulatory scope by exploiting this linguistic contradiction, arguing that, say, an ephemeral pond or isolated pocosin should not count as WOTUS.
多年来，开发商试图利用这种语言矛盾来放松《清洁水法》的监管范围，他们认为，短暂的池塘或孤立的波科辛不应算作 WOTUS。
In the first major Supreme Court case about the matter, 2006’s Rapanos v.
最高法院关于该问题的第一起重大案件是 2006 年的 Rapanos v.
United States, Antonin Scalia (that famed hydrologist) argued unsuccessfully that the federal government should not have jurisdiction over “transitory puddles or ephemeral flows of water.” In 2023’s Sackett v.
美国著名水文学家安东尼·斯卡利亚（Antonin Scalia）主张联邦政府不应对“短暂的水坑或短暂的水流”拥有管辖权，但没有成功。 2023 年的萨克特诉。
EPA, Scalia’s ecological wisdom won out, when the majority decided that in order to count as WOTUS, a wetland had to have a “continuous surface connection” to a truly navigable waterway like a river or lake.
EPA 中，斯卡利亚的生态智慧获胜，大多数人决定，为了算作 WOTUS，湿地必须与真正可通航的水道（如河流或湖泊）有“连续的表面连接”。
This means that when water flows between the banks of the Congaree River, the federal government will defend it from pollution, agricultural runoff, and development.
这意味着当水在康加里河两岸之间流动时，联邦政府将保护它免受污染、农业径流和开发的影响。
A dozen times a year, however, when that water surges into the guts and ponds and oxbow lakes of the Congaree Swamp, as it has for millennia, it would no longer qualify as WOTUS, no longer fall under federal jurisdiction.
然而，当这些水每年十几次涌入康加里沼泽的内脏、池塘和牛轭湖时（几千年来一直如此），它就不再符合 WOTUS 的资格，不再受联邦管辖。
To ignore that these processes are essentially two movements of the same symphony, or that nature operates on a level far more sophisticated than the human eye’s crude “continuous surface connection,” should perhaps itself be criminal.
忽视这些过程本质上是同一首交响乐的两个乐章，或者忽视自然的运作水平比人眼粗糙的“连续表面连接”复杂得多，也许本身就是犯罪。
According to the National Resources Defense Council, the Sackett decision removed federal protection from as many as 70 million acres (or a staggering 84 percent) of the nation’s wetlands, its wet meadows, marshes, bogs, and sloughs.
根据国家资源保护委员会的说法，萨克特的决定取消了对全国多达 7000 万英亩（即惊人的 84%）湿地、湿草甸、沼泽、沼泽和泥沼的联邦保护。
The difference between a bottomland hardwood forest and a swamp won’t really matter anymore if they’re both gone.
如果低地硬木森林和沼泽都消失了，它们之间的区别就不再重要了。
Back in Congaree’s deserted parking lot, we made instant coffee, lashed sleeping bags and dry sacks to our packs, and headed back into the woods.
回到康加里废弃的停车场，我们煮了速溶咖啡，把睡袋和干燥麻袋绑在背包上，然后回到树林里。
In an empty clearing, we set up our tent next to the cheerful pompom of a young longleaf pine.
在一片空地上，我们在一棵年轻的长叶松树的欢快绒球旁边搭起了帐篷。
As twilight arrived, I worried someone would come and spoil our solitude, but no one did.
暮色降临时，我担心有人会来破坏我们的孤独，但没有人这样做。
The park’s swampy reputation hasn’t completely washed away; it’s still the 13th-least visited park in the system.
公园的沼泽名声还没有完全消失。它仍然是系统中访问量最少的公园中排名第 13 位的。
At 2 a.m., I awoke to the cry of coyotes and trains, a siren wailing in nearby Columbia.
凌晨 2 点，我在土狼和火车的叫声中醒来，附近哥伦比亚的警报声也响起。
I thought about the girl I had been when I lived in that city.
我想起了我住在那个城市时的那个女孩。
I thought about how one minute you’re 20 years old, ruining the resale value of your Civic with endless Camel Lights, so unimpressed with the world around you, and the next minute you’re 40, wearing shirts with built-in SPF protection and happily following a duck around the woods.
我想到前一分钟你还是 20 岁，没完没了的驼色灯毁掉了你的思域的转售价值，对周围的世界漠不关心，下一分钟你就已经 40 岁了，穿着内置 SPF 保护的衬衫，快乐地跟着一只鸭子在树林里转悠。
Of course, turning 40 had been accompanied by a requisite amount of angst.
当然，40 岁之际伴随着一定程度的焦虑。
For months I had dreaded my birthday, ruminating on the cruel and irresistible current of time.
几个月来，我一直害怕自己的生日，思考残酷而不可抗拒的时间潮流。
I had been young and now would be old.
我曾经年轻过，现在已经老了。
But laying on a sandy bluff above a swamp full of trees that every day observe the lives and deaths of countless wild beings, I could only sense the strangeness—and sweetness—of the tides, the wild, unpredictable flux of it all.
但躺在长满树木的沼泽上方的沙质悬崖上，每天观察着无数野生动物的生死，我只能感受到潮汐的陌生和甜蜜，以及这一切的狂野、不可预测的变化。
“What paradox that in a groundless refuge what has been tight and willed relaxes until fear begins to dissipate,” writes Hurd.
赫德写道：“在一个毫无根据的避难所中，一直紧张和意愿的东西会放松下来，直到恐惧开始消散，这真是一个悖论。”
“The lines relax, the definitions go mushy, the body limp with this landscape, itself so limp and ill defined.”
“线条变得松弛，定义变得模糊，身体在这片风景中变得软弱无力，本身也如此软弱和模糊。”
Land and water, young and old: What useless dichotomies we insist on clinging to, despite this beautiful, in-between world we have been given.
土地和水，年轻的和年老的：尽管我们被赋予了这个美丽的、介于两者之间的世界，但我们坚持坚持着多么无用的二分法。
I sure was digging the empty parking lots and early morning glimpses of profundity, but two-thirds of the way through our trip, I was eager to immerse myself in a proper swamp, sludgy and muddy and maybe even a little hostile.
我确实在挖掘空荡荡的停车场，并在清晨瞥见深处，但在我们旅行的三分之二的时间里，我渴望将自己沉浸在一个合适的沼泽中，泥泞不堪，甚至可能有点敌意。
It was a good time to visit the Okefenokee.
这是参观奥克弗诺基的好时机。
At 700 square miles—about 10 times the size of Washington, D.C.—this blackwater behemoth in southeast Georgia is the largest swamp in North America.
佐治亚州东南部的这个黑水庞然大物占地 700 平方英里，大约是华盛顿特区的 10 倍，是北美最大的沼泽。
On a placid weekday morning, beneath a teetering shelf of thunderclouds, we heaved ourselves into rented kayaks, dry bags of freeze-dried food and magazines (the luxury of boat travel) wedged between our feet, and set off down the Suwannee Canal.
在一个平静的工作日早晨，在雷雨云的摇摇欲坠的架子下，我们把自己塞进租来的皮划艇，两脚夹着装有冻干食品和杂志的干燥袋（乘船旅行的奢侈），然后沿着苏旺尼运河出发。
Dug more than a century ago, this 11-mile, rail-straight channel is all that remains of the feeble attempt to drain the legendary morass.
这条 11 英里长的铁路直道是在一个多世纪前挖掘的，是排干这片传奇沼泽的徒劳尝试的唯一遗迹。
Swamps are typically classified by their dominant vegetation types—the Great Swamp is largely a shrub swamp, while the Great Dismal is mostly cypress.
沼泽通常根据其主要植被类型进行分类——大沼泽主要是灌木沼泽，而大沼泽主要是柏树。
The Okefenokee is so massive, it contains several different types of swamp ecosystems, including tupelo, gum, and evergreen bay.
奥克弗诺基面积巨大，包含多种不同类型的沼泽生态系统，包括图珀洛沼泽、橡胶沼泽和常绿湾沼泽。
It was this valuable array of immense and primordial trees that drew prospectors here in the late 18th century and what prompted the excavation of the canal.
正是这些珍贵的巨大原始树木在 18 世纪末吸引了探矿者来到这里，并促使了运河的开挖。
But the digging—like tunneling through pudding—went poorly, and the trees—some of them so massive that loggers had to use dynamite to blow them into transportable pieces—proved an exceedingly reluctant harvest.
但挖掘工作（就像在布丁中挖隧道一样）进行得很糟糕，而树木（其中一些树木非常巨大，以至于伐木工不得不使用炸药将它们炸成可运输的碎片）的收成极其勉强。
Damage was done, but wave after wave of would-be swamp-drainers were forced to give up.
损害已经造成，但一波又一波的沼泽排水者被迫放弃。
Land and water, young and old: What useless dichotomies we insist on clinging to, despite this beautiful, in-between world we have been given.
土地和水，年轻的和年老的：尽管我们被赋予了这个美丽的、介于两者之间的世界，但我们坚持坚持着多么无用的二分法。
While the Congaree and its giant trees were spared largely through the weekly columns of a South Carolina journalist, the saviors of the Okefenokee were naturalists who found in the swamp an oasis of unparalleled biodiversity and urged for its protection.
虽然康加里河及其参天大树很大程度上是通过南卡罗来纳州记者的每周专栏才得以幸免，但奥克弗诺基河的救世主却是博物学家，他们在沼泽中发现了一片拥有无与伦比的生物多样性的绿洲，并敦促对其进行保护。
Like the Great Dismal, the Okefenokee had its own reclusive residents known as Swampers.
与大悲惨区一样，奥克弗诺基也有自己的隐居居民，称为沼泽者。
Mostly poor Scots Irish, these squatters scratched out a living in the swamp by becoming as native to it as the animals that lived there, developing the sight of an owl and the stealth of an alligator.
这些擅自占地者大多是贫穷的苏格兰爱尔兰人，他们在沼泽地里谋生，他们与生活在那里的动物一样是土生土长的，发展了猫头鹰的视力和鳄鱼的隐秘能力。
With their deep ecological savvy, Swampers served as indispensable assistants to the scientists who descended on the swamp in the early 20th century—leading them through labyrinthian waters, delivering them specimens and skins—a service that would lead to their wholesale eviction when the land was turned into a national wildlife refuge in 1937.
凭借深厚的生态悟性，沼泽人成为了 20 世纪初来到沼泽地的科学家们不可或缺的助手——带领他们穿过迷宫般的水域，为他们提供标本和毛皮——这一服务导致他们在 1937 年这片土地变成国家野生动物保护区时遭到大规模驱逐。
A visitor to the refuge figures out pretty quickly that looks can be deceiving.
来到避难所的游客很快就会发现外表可能具有欺骗性。
Curled rows of jagged rocks turn out to be alligator spines that disappear when paddles approach; patches of seemingly solid ground bob on the water like pool toys.
一排排卷曲的锯齿状岩石原来是鳄鱼的刺，当桨靠近时，这些刺就会消失。一块块看似坚固的地面在水面上晃动，就像泳池玩具一样。
These spongy rafts of peat—liberated from the swamp’s decomposing depths to its surface by an explosion of methane—are called blow-ups.
这些海绵状的泥炭筏——通过甲烷爆炸从沼泽的分解深处释放到地表——被称为爆炸。
Blow-ups that sprout plants like iris and sundew and bladderwort are called batteries.
使鸢尾花、茅膏菜和膀胱草等植物发芽的爆炸物被称为电池。
Batteries can eventually recruit enough life to become tree islands called houses.
电池最终可以吸收足够的生命，成为被称为房屋的树岛。
The swamp’s assonant name was born of this distinctive ecology; a Hitchiti word used by the Muscogee who consider the Okefenokee their homeland, okifanô ki means “bubbling water,” “shaking water in a low place,” or, as it is most commonly translated, “trembling earth.”
沼泽的谐音名字就源于这种独特的生态。 okifanô ki 是马斯科吉人所使用的希其提语单词，他们将奥克弗诺基人视为自己的家园，okifanô ki 的意思是“冒泡的水”、“在低处摇动水”，或者最常见的翻译是“颤抖的大地”。
After a few hours of pulling our kayaks through the still water, pausing to watch herons and ibises sail effortlessly across a yawning sky, I grew antsy.
在平静的水面上拖着我们的皮划艇几个小时，停下来观看苍鹭和朱鹮毫不费力地划过张开的天空后，我变得焦躁起来。
My back hurt.
我的背受伤了。
My shoulders ached.
我的肩膀很痛。
A burst of hot rain obscured the view from my sunglasses.
一阵热雨遮住了我太阳镜的视线。
I had to fight the urge to abandon ship, to step into this lovely, trembling land and examine it like the biped I am.
我必须克制弃船的冲动，踏入这片可爱的、颤抖的土地，像我一样审视它。
I had to remind myself that like all the money-hungry swamp drainers that came before, I would be rebuffed and rejected, or rather gulped up immediately.
我必须提醒自己，就像之前所有贪图金钱的沼泽排水者一样，我会被拒绝，或者更确切地说，立即被吞掉。
“Those who encountered the swamp often noted their dual feelings of admiration and fear,” writes the historian Megan Kate Nelson in her book about the Okefenokee.
历史学家梅根·凯特·纳尔逊在她关于奥克弗诺基的书中写道：“那些遇到沼泽的人常常会感受到钦佩和恐惧的双重感受。”
“It was so easy to get lost in this morass, to feel alone and abandoned, despite the beauty all around.”
“尽管周围很美丽，但很容易在这片沼泽中迷失方向，感到孤独和被遗弃。”
Miles and long miles later, my feet finally found purchase on the camping platform that I had secured two months earlier, setting an alarm for 8 a.m.
走了好几英里之后，我的脚终于在两个月前固定的露营平台上找到了支撑，并设置了早上 8 点的闹钟。
when reservations opened (people really don’t like swamps, except, it seems, for the Okefenokee, where campsites are perennially booked).
当预订开放时（人们真的不喜欢沼泽，除了奥克弗诺基，那里的露营地常年被预订）。
It was about 100 square feet of plywood decking with a tin roof and a picnic table and a pit toilet surrounded by scrubby, flooded forest, a vision that looked like one I’d imagined from the driver’s seat in Maryland, daydreaming a swampy sojourn.
这是一个大约 100 平方英尺的胶合板甲板，有铁皮屋顶、一张野餐桌和一个坑式厕所，周围是灌木丛生的、被水淹没的森林，这一景象看起来就像我在马里兰州驾驶座上想象的那样，梦见在沼泽地逗留。
We made ourselves at home.
我们就像在家里一样。
We boiled coffee and hung wet clothes from the spray of nails haphazardly driven into each vertical surface.
我们煮了咖啡，把湿衣服挂在随意钉入每个垂直表面的指甲上。
I wrote postcards from the picnic table, sending greetings to friends from one of the largest intact freshwater ecosystems left in the world.
我在野餐桌上写了明信片，向来自世界上最大的完整淡水生态系统之一的朋友们致以问候。
I wished they could see it.
我希望他们能看到它。
I wished everybody could see it.
我希望每个人都能看到它。
As the heat of the day barreled through like a mile-long freight train, we stripped down to our underwear.
当一天的炎热像一英里长的货运列车一样席卷而过时，我们脱得只剩下内衣。
We crawled into the tent and laid on our backs.
我们爬进帐篷，仰面躺着。
I listened for a police siren or jet engine.
我聆听警笛或喷气发动机的声音。
Everything was quiet except for the catbirds.
除了猫鸟之外，一切都很安静。
And then, here in the very strength, the marrow of nature, I began to worry.
然后，在大自然的力量和精髓中，我开始担心。
A relevant footnote to this trip is that it took place during the week of the 2024 election—one that would matter so much for the places like the ones we had seen.
这次旅行的一个相关脚注是，它发生在 2024 年大选的那一周——这对于我们所见过的那些地方来说非常重要。
Each night, before falling asleep, I had asked Jeff: Will it be okay?
每天晚上入睡前，我都会问杰夫：可以吗？
And he had said: It will be okay.
他说过：一切都会好起来的。
But we both knew, I think, already that it wouldn’t.
但我想，我们都知道事实并非如此。
In the Okefenokee, developers had been lobbying for years to dig a titanium dioxide strip mine in wetlands adjacent to the refuge, a bid that was far more likely to win approval after the Sackett decision.
在奥克弗诺基，开发商多年来一直在游说在避难所附近的湿地挖掘二氧化钛露天矿，在萨克特决定之后，这一投标更有可能获得批准。
But as the Okefenokee swaddled me in its hot breath, I tried to remember how many assaults it and the other swamps on our itinerary had already survived.
但当奥克弗诺基用它滚烫的呼吸包裹着我时，我试图回忆它和我们行程中的其他沼泽已经经历了多少次袭击。
Swamps don’t persist, they insist.
他们坚持认为，沼泽不会持续存在。
It would be okay, I told myself, and there would be other days, so many other days, for worry.
没关系，我告诉自己，还会有很多其他的日子，需要担心。
After a dinner of ravioli and granola bars, we remanned our kayaks and chased the sunset down a narrow gut of ebony water to a lake as wide and round as a bald cypress stump.
吃过馄饨和格兰诺拉麦片的晚餐后，我们重新装好皮划艇，沿着一条狭窄的乌木水域追赶着日落，来到了一个像秃柏树桩一样宽阔和圆润的湖。
We reclined against our rusty seats, paddles forgotten across our lap, and beheld the sky, as fountains of cumulonimbus clouds bubbled orange then pink then purple—in a light show as ostentatious as any shopping-mall oil painting—while chittering kingfishers played tag around the tree line.
我们靠在生锈的座椅上，桨忘在腿上，眺望天空，积雨云的喷泉不断地冒着橙色、粉色、紫色的气泡——灯光秀就像购物中心的油画一样炫目——而叽叽喳喳的翠鸟则在林木线周围玩捉迷藏。
“I have seen sunsets in various lands and upon the sea, but never such a one as this evening,” wrote Francis Harper, one of the ornithologists who fought to save the Okefenokee.
“我在不同的陆地和海上见过日落，但从未见过像今晚这样的日落，”为拯救奥克弗诺基而奋斗的鸟类学家之一弗朗西斯·哈珀写道。
“The celestial splendor struck me fairly agape.”
“天上的辉煌让我目瞪口呆。”
Same.
相同的。
When the sun officially clocked out, the bugs came on like a fever and by 8:30 p.m.
当太阳正式落下时，这些虫子就像发烧一样开始出现，到晚上 8 点 30 分。
we had retreated to the tent to read water-warped magazines by headlamp.
我们退回到帐篷里，靠着头灯阅读被水浸湿的杂志。
As if summoned by the sound of the zipper, a trio of cartoonish raccoons soon emerged single-file from the swamp—eyes glowing, bellies dripping—to case the joint.
仿佛是被拉链的声音召唤了一样，三只卡通浣熊很快从沼泽地里排成一排——眼睛发光，肚子滴水——来包住关节。
Undeterred by either our flashlights or our laughter, they peered into thermoses and pried open day packs, interrogating every inch of the scene as the bags of trash and food we had tied to the rafters swung gently above their heads.
他们没有被我们的手电筒或笑声所吓倒，而是盯着热水瓶，撬开日用包，审问着场景的每一寸，而我们绑在房梁上的垃圾袋和食物袋在他们头顶上轻轻晃动。
We meandered down the long tongue of Florida.
我们沿着佛罗里达州的长舌蜿蜒而行。
We stopped in Callahan to eat fried seafood and in Cassadaga to see a psychic.
我们在卡拉汉停下来吃炸海鲜，然后在卡萨达加去看通灵者。
We stopped in so many gas stations for so many ridiculous flavors of fizzy water.
我们停在了很多加油站，买了很多味道可笑的碳酸水。
We stopped in Avon Park for the night and tucked ourselves beneath the pretty floral comforters of a hotel named for a pretty pink tree where the phone on the nightstand still had a dangling, corkscrew cord.
我们在埃文公园停留了一晚，把自己塞在一家酒店漂亮的花卉被子下，这家酒店以一棵漂亮的粉红色树命名，床头柜上的电话仍然悬着一根螺旋线。
In the morning, we stopped at a Jamaican bodega to gather treats for later.
早上，我们在牙买加的一家小酒馆停下来，为以后准备一些食物。
We were on our way to the anchor tip of the East Coast, to land that, when it was ceded to Florida by the 1850 Swamp Land Act, more than doubled the size of the state in a single day.
我们正前往东海岸的锚点，在那里登陆，1850 年《沼泽地法案》将其割让给佛罗里达州时，该州的面积在一天之内就扩大了一倍多。
Officials immediately got to work draining the 20 million swampy acres they inherited, eventually building thousands of miles of canals and levees to bleed the land dry.
官员们立即开始排干他们继承的 2000 万英亩沼泽地，最终修建了数千英里的运河和堤坝，将土地排干。
And while it is true that more than half of Florida’s wetlands are now buried beneath sugarcane fields and four-lane highways and housing developments and the endless swarming drive-throughs of Chick-fil-A, some of the country’s most iconic swampland survives in South Florida—the Everglades, yes, and its lesser-appreciated understudy: the Big Cypress Swamp.
虽然佛罗里达州一半以上的湿地现在都被埋在甘蔗田、四车道高速公路、住房开发区和无穷无尽的福乐鸡车道下面，但该国最具标志性的一些沼泽地在南佛罗里达州幸存下来——是的，大沼泽地，以及它不太受重视的替身：大柏树沼泽。
Freshwater moves in sheets across this 729,000-acre wetland, critical to the clean water supply of millions of Floridians and the well-being of surrounding ecosystems.
淡水在这片占地 729,000 英亩的湿地中流动，对于数百万佛罗里达人的清洁水供应和周围生态系统的福祉至关重要。
A big ol’ Brita filter absorbing runoff, pollutants, and sediment, the swamp slowly oozes between and sometimes over expanses of prairies and pinelands and hardwood hammocks of live oak and cabbage palm.
沼泽像一个巨大的布瑞塔过滤器，吸收径流、污染物和沉积物，在大草原和松林以及活橡树和卷心菜棕榈树的硬木吊床之间缓慢渗出，有时甚至覆盖大片草原和松林。
Here, some of the rarest creatures in the country find refuge—the ghost orchid, the Florida bonneted bat, the Florida panther.
该国一些最稀有的生物在这里找到了庇护所——鬼兰、佛罗里达帽蝠、佛罗里达黑豹。
If I had learned anything over the last 10 days, it was that swamps reward diligence—patient, plodding hikes or extended paddles—but we had left little time for that.
如果说我在过去 10 天里学到了什么的话，那就是沼泽奖励勤奋——耐心、艰难的徒步旅行或长时间的划桨——但我们没有留下多少时间。
There were old friends and dinner reservations in Miami; there were emails filling up inboxes, a dog in the kennel back home.
在迈阿密有老朋友和晚餐预订；收件箱里充满了电子邮件，家里的狗窝里有一只狗。
When I asked the ranger for an easy way into Big Cypress, she looked skeptical.
当我向护林员询问进入大柏树的捷径时，她显得持怀疑态度。
It had been rainy, she said.
她说，当时正下雨。
A half mile into the short hike she suggested, the water lapped our knees.
在她建议的短途徒步旅行半英里后，水淹没了我们的膝盖。
Peering deeper into the kaleidoscope of cypress and sawgrass, ferns and epiphytes, I thought about the shoes I should have been wearing, the first aid kit I should have packed.
深入观察柏树、锯草、蕨类植物和附生植物的万花筒，我想到了我应该穿的鞋子，我应该带上的急救箱。
I remembered, again, that I am a terrestrial species.
我再次想起我是一个陆地物种。
Spit out of the swamp, returned to the other side of the looking glass, we experienced it the way most people do.
吐出沼泽，回到镜子的另一边，我们以大多数人的方式经历了这一切。
On a dusty, cratered scenic drive, we admired listless gators and angel-white egrets, demolishing the rental car’s suspension in the meantime.
在一条尘土飞扬、坑坑洼洼的风景车道上，我们欣赏着无精打采的鳄鱼和天使般的白鹭，同时拆除了租赁汽车的悬架。
Like its New Jersey counterpart, Big Cypress was once slated for its own futuristic jet port, where supersonic airliners would take off and touch down every minute on six runways that stretched six miles long.
与新泽西州的同行一样，大柏树曾经计划建设自己的未来派喷气机机场，在那里，超音速客机每分钟都会在六英里长的六条跑道上起飞和降落。
A new interstate and monorail would connect it to cities on the coasts.
一条新的州际公路和单轨铁路将把它与沿海城市连接起来。
It would be—wait for it—the largest airport ever built.
等等，这将是有史以来最大的机场。
This was 1968, just as New Jersey’s Great Swamp was earning its wilderness status.
那是 1968 年，正当新泽西州的大沼泽获得荒野地位时。
Thirteen hundred miles away, miles I now knew well, another coalition of advocates—the Miccosukee and the Seminole who had inhabited this land for centuries, as well as the birders and the hunters who cherished its wildlife—rallied on behalf of the swamp.
一千三百英里之外，也就是我现在熟悉的几英里之外，另一个倡导者联盟——在这片土地上居住了几个世纪的米科苏基人和塞米诺尔人，以及珍惜这片野生动物的观鸟者和猎人——为了沼泽地集结起来。
They received a boost from a US Geological Survey team led by Luna Leopold (son of legendary conservationist Aldo), who drew up what became the nation’s first environmental impact report about the project, finding that the development would “inexorably destroy the south Florida ecosystem,” as well as the Everglades.
他们得到了由卢纳·利奥波德（传奇环境保护主义者奥尔多的儿子）领导的美国地质调查小组的支持，该小组起草了美国第一份有关该项目的环境影响报告，发现该开发将“不可避免地破坏南佛罗里达州的生态系统”以及大沼泽地。
In the end, only one runway was built before the plan was scrapped, and in 1974, the swamp became the country’s first national preserve.
最终只修建了一条跑道，该计划就被废弃，1974年，这片沼泽成为该国第一个国家保护区。
Fifty years later and 15 miles away from that lonely airstrip, we pulled into a vacant lakeside campground, greeted by a loafing gator and Midwestern camp host with friendly eyes.
五十年后，在距离那个孤独的飞机跑道 15 英里的地方，我们把车开进了一个空置的湖边露营地，迎接我们的是一只闲逛的鳄鱼和中西部露营地的主人，他们用友好的眼神迎接我们。
Take your pick, he said.
你自己选择吧，他说。
We were his only visitors that night.
那天晚上我们是他唯一的访客。
We chose a site by the pine woods, where the late evening air smelled as raw as a freshly pruned tomato.
我们选择了松树林边的一个地点，傍晚的空气闻起来像刚修剪过的西红柿一样原始。
We spread out dinner and boiled water for coffee and, for the last time, reviewed the day’s many delights: the cormorant who swiped a fish from a heron’s beak, an iridescent tree snail zippered to a wild tamarind tree.
我们准备了晚餐和煮咖啡的开水，最后一次回顾了这一天的许多乐趣：鸬鹚从苍鹭嘴里叼走了一条鱼，一只彩虹色的树蜗牛被拉链拉到一棵野生罗望子树上。
Even the mosquitoes weren’t bad, we agreed, though we had perhaps become inured.
我们同意，即使是蚊子也不错，尽管我们可能已经习惯了。
Like all those we had learned about on our journey—the Natives and the outcasts, the scientists and the journalists, the heartbroken poets and the furious mothers—we were swamp people now.
就像我们在旅途中了解到的所有人一样——土著和流浪者、科学家和记者、伤心欲绝的诗人和愤怒的母亲——我们现在是沼泽民了。
I felt grateful and wistful, sad that our trip was ending.
我感到感激和渴望，为我们的旅行结束感到悲伤。
We should sleep in the back of this cavernous SUV, I suggested, for old times’ sake.
我建议，看在旧时光的份上，我们应该睡在这辆宽敞的SUV的后座上。
As the sun rose the next day, we rolled up the sleeping bags, gathered headlamps and wristwatches, and dissected the tent.
第二天太阳升起时，我们卷起睡袋，带上头灯和手表，开始拆解帐篷。
We showered in the bathhouse and put on the creased clothing from the bottom of our bags.
我们在澡堂洗了个澡，从包里拿出了皱巴巴的衣服。
We turned east on the Tamiami Trail toward Miami, passing the turnoff for that single runway from the ’70s, now called the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport.
我们沿着塔迈阿密步道向东转向迈阿密，经过了 70 年代单跑道的岔道，现在称为戴德-科利尔训练和过渡机场。
What we didn’t know then is that six months later, the site that once quietly memorialized an environmental victory would be turned into a migrant detention center—constructed in haste and in secret without so much as a thought to an environmental impact report—or that the administration would recycle all the tired tropes of a B-movie to promote their dehumanizing facility, conjuring the heat, the pythons, and the “Alligator Alcatraz” of the Big Cypress Swamp.
当时我们不知道的是，六个月后，这个曾经默默纪念环境胜利的地方将变成一个移民拘留中心——匆忙而秘密地建造，根本没有考虑过环境影响报告——或者政府会重复使用B级电影中所有陈旧的比喻来宣传他们非人性化的设施，召唤大柏树沼泽的炎热、蟒蛇和“鳄鱼恶魔岛”。
The relationship between America and her swamps is like the swamp itself—unpredictable, shifting, circling back endlessly on itself.
美国和沼泽地之间的关系就像沼泽地本身一样——不可预测、不断变化、无休止地循环。
It’s not always easy to tell what is perishing and what is persisting.
分辨什么正在消失、什么正在持续并不总是那么容易。
Only a few days before the migrant detention center was unveiled, defenders of the Okefenokee had reason to celebrate, when an environmental nonprofit group spent an unprecedented $60 million to purchase and protect the 8,000 acres that had been targeted for mining.
就在移民拘留中心揭幕前几天，奥克弗诺基的捍卫者们有理由庆祝，一个环保非营利组织史无前例地斥资 6,000 万美元购买并保护了 8,000 英亩用于采矿的土地。
Soon, the swamp may be inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, joining cherished landscapes like the Great Barrier Reef and Yellowstone National Park.
很快，这片沼泽可能会与大堡礁和黄石国家公园等珍贵景观一起被列入联合国教科文组织世界遗产名录。
“The fluctuations, circulations, and confrontations embedded in the swamp reveal an American historical narrative that is not a neat, organized trajectory,” writes Nelson.
尼尔森写道：“沼泽中的波动、循环和对抗揭示了美国的历史叙事，它并不是一条整齐、有组织的轨迹。”
“Instead, it is messy, befuddling, and often difficult to pin down.
“相反，它是混乱的、令人困惑的，而且往往很难确定。
It is, in short, the muck of history.”
简而言之，这就是历史的垃圾。”
On that two-lane highway, a sinking city on the horizon, an imperiled landscape in the rearview, I felt the muck of history all around me.
在那条双车道高速公路上，地平线上一座正在下沉的城市，后视镜中一片危险的风景，我感到周围都是历史的淤泥。
But, after 10 days in the swamp, I also felt the growing conviction that muck is not bad, that muck is essential.
但是，在沼泽地呆了十天之后，我也越来越相信泥土并不坏，泥土是必不可少的。
That muck, in fact, is what my very body is made of, swirling as it does with blood and skin and soft organs, swirling as it does with dreams and uncertainties that are born, that die, and that give way, always, to something new.
事实上，这些淤泥就是我的身体的组成部分，它与血液、皮肤和软器官一起旋转，与梦想和不确定性一起旋转，这些梦想和不确定性诞生、死亡，并总是让位于新的东西。
“We are shape shifters, all of us, liquid mosaics of mutable and transient urges,” writes Hurd.
赫德写道：“我们所有人都是变形者，都是易变而短暂的冲动的液体马赛克。”
“We give ourselves headaches when we pretend otherwise, when we stiffen ourselves into permanent and separate identities unsullied by the drifting slop, the very real ambiguities of ourselves and the world.”
“当我们假装相反时，当我们把自己僵化成永久的、独立的身份，不被漂流的泥水、我们自己和世界的真正模糊性所玷污时，我们就会让自己头疼。”
It is simple to divide the world into reassuring contrasts, but to love a swamp is to practice appreciating the murky, mushy spaces inside and outside the margins, to believe that there is rich time and deep space for both and everything in between: Civilized and wild.
将世界划分为令人放心的对比是很简单的，但热爱沼泽就是练习欣赏边缘内外阴暗、糊状的空间，相信两者以及两者之间的一切都有丰富的时间和深邃的空间：文明的和狂野的。
Terrified and hopeful.
既害怕又充满希望。
Forty and still kind of new here.
四十岁了，这里还是新的。
A terrestrial species and a swamp person at heart.
一个陆地物种，内心是一个沼泽人。
## *A Swamp-Appreciation Bibliography ↩︎
## *沼泽-鉴赏书目↩︎
Ashley Stimpson is a freelance writer based in Maryland who has written about science, conservation, and the outdoors for outlets like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Popular Mechanics.
阿什利·斯廷普森 (Ashley Stimpson) 是马里兰州的一名自由撰稿人，为《华盛顿邮报》、《纽约时报》、《卫报》和《大众机械》等媒体撰写有关科学、保护和户外活动的文章。
She is a 2025-2026 Alicia Patterson Fellow.
她是 2025-2026 年艾丽西亚·帕特森研究员。
Editor: Krista StevensCopyeditor: Cheri Lucas RowlandsFact checker: Julie Schwietert Collazo
编辑：Krista Stevens 文案编辑：Cheri Lucas Rowlands 事实核查：Julie Schwietert Collazo