What nature is telling you
倾听自然诉说
Let's sit down here, all of us, on the open prairie, where we can't see a highway or a fence, free from the debris of the city. Let's have no blankets to sit on, but let our bodies converge with the earth, the surrounding trees and shrubs. Let's have the vegetation for a mattress, experiencing its texture, its sharpness and its softness. Let us become like stones, plants, and trees. Let us be animals, think and feel like animals.
让我们在这儿坐下来吧,我们所有的人,就在这片广阔的草原上。在这里,我们看不见高速公路,看不见围栏,远离城市垃圾。我们不要铺毯子,就让我们的身体和大地、周围的树木及灌木来个亲密接触吧。让我们把草当垫子,感受它或许坚硬或许柔软的质地。让我们想象自己变成了石头、植物和树木,想象自己变成了动物,并像动物那样思考和感觉。
This is my plea: Listen to the air. You can hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it. We feel it between us, as a presence presiding over the day. It is a good way to start thinking about nature and talking about it. To go further, we must rather talk to it, talk to the rivers, to the lakes, to the winds as to our relatives.
这就是我的请求:倾听空气。你们可以听见它,感觉它,闻到它,品尝它。我们可以感到它就在我们中间,作为一种实实在在的存在,主宰着每一天。这是一个好方式,我们可以就这样开始思考自然,谈论自然。如果再想好点的话,我们就不如和自然说话,也就是和江河说话,和湖泊说话,和风说话,就像我们和亲人说话一样。
You have impaired our ability to experience nature in the good way, as part of it. Even here we are conscious that somewhere beyond the marsh and its cranes, somewhere out in those hills there are radar towers and highway overpasses. This land is so beautiful and strange that now some of you want to make it into a national park. You have not only contaminated the earth, the rocks, the minerals, all of which you call "dead" but which are very much alive; you have even changed the animals, which are part of us, changed them into vulgar zoological mutations, so no one can recognize them.
你们已经损坏了我们人类作为大自然的一部分以一种美好的方式体验大自然的能力。即使在这里,我们也知道,在沼泽地和栖息于此的鹤之外的某个地方,在远处山里的某个地方,就建有雷达塔和高速公路立交桥。这片土地如此美丽与奇特,以至于你们中的某些人想把它变成一座国家公园。你们已经污染了土地、岩石、矿物——这些都是被你们称为已经“死去”但其实是非常有生命活力的东西。不仅如此,就连属于我们一部分的动物,也被你们改造了。你们把它们变成了低级的基因变异动物,以至于没有人能再认识它们。
There is power in an antelope, so you let it graze within your fences. But what power do you see in a goat or sheep, prey animals with no defenses, creatures that hold still while you slaughter them? There was great power in a wolf, even in a fox. You have inverted nature and turned these noble animals into miniature lap dogs. Nature is bound by your ropes and whips and is obedient to your commands. You can't do much with a cat, so you fix it, alter it, declaw it, and even cut its vocal cords so that you can experiment on it in a laboratory without being disturbed by its cries.
羚羊是一种有力量的动物,因而你们把它圈养在栅栏里。但是,山羊或绵羊,这些没有自卫能力的猎物、这些悄无声息任凭你们宰杀的动物,你们在它们身上看到了什么力量?狼身上有巨大的力量,狐狸身上也同样有巨大的力量。你们违背自然,把这些高贵的动物变成了小型的可以放在腿上把玩的哈巴狗。自然被你们的绳索和鞭子所束缚,屈服于你们的命令。对猫,你们无能为力,所以你们就设法修理它们、改造它们,剪掉它们锋利的爪子,甚至切断它们的声带,这样你们就可以用猫在实验室做实验,而不会再受它们叫声的干扰。