玩笑英语201710浙江英语续写出处

2021年1月7日发(作者：柯著)

Nightmare in the Woods

Day 1
I
t was shaping up to be the perfect weekend. Last July, Pamela Salant, a 28-year-old
preschool teacher, and her boyfriend, Aric Essig, 31, who works for a sailboat
company, had driven two hours east from Portland, Oregon, to camp overnight in the
Mount Hood National Forest. They planned to hike a mile and a half through the
forest to Bear Lake, spend the night, and walk back out on Sunday to attend a birthday
party for two of her students. It was sunny, clear, and fine.
But during the hike, the subject of their on-again/off-again relationship came up, and
the tension between the two began to rise. By the time they set down their packs at the
campsite on the south shore of the lake, Salant was blind with anger. “I’m sorry, Pam,”
Essig said. “I’m going to see if I can find a better spot for us to camp,” she told him,
stalking off along the western shore of the lake. It was one o’clock.
Bear Lake is only about 100 yards long, hemmed in by trees, which forced Salant to
drift inland. With no trail to follow, she descended a drainage basin, climbed up the
other side, and scrambled atop a pile of rocks. Where she expected the lake to be, she
saw nothing but steep forest and, far beyond, a snowcapped peak. She began
backtracking through the dense woods, but the farther she walked, the more confused
she became.
“Aric!” she called. “Help!”
No response. She kept moving until she came to a stream. She knew that the creeks
here flowed northward toward the Columbia River, several miles away. But what
good was that when she didn’t know anything else? She clambered up a series of
cliffs to get the lay of the land, climbing a dangerous scree slope and topping out on a
boulder. She scanned the horizon. Nothing but trees. She’d been hiking for six hours,
and the sun would be setting soon. With a new panic, she began to descend. There, far
below! A lake! But was it Bear Lake? It didn’t matter — any lake ought to have trails
or people along it. She picked her way down to the lower elevations, traversing the
cliffs as carefully as she could.

Then, a misstep, and darkness.
When Salant awoke a few minutes later, the first thing she noticed was the cliff she’d
fallen from looming 40 feet above her. The second was that her left leg curved
strangely outward below the knee. “OK,” she told herself, “my leg’s broken.”
Surprisingly, the injury was not excruciating — some primal part of her had taken
over, allowing her to go into problem- solving mode: She was hurt and alone with
night coming on and absolutely no gear. All she wore were shorts, a tank top, socks,
and boots. She could hear water trickling somewhere in the middle distance, probably
a stream. She would sleep right here for the night, and in the morning she would
follow the sound of the water to the creek.


Day 2
I
n the middle of the cold night, she awoke and felt that her left leg was wet. Hours
later, at sunrise, she saw that the moisture was blood. She had a deep gash on her right
leg — a result of her fall — and it had bled all over her broken left leg. She could see
its gleaming white bone with folds of torn and bloodied pink tissue above it. Once
again, she processed this fresh horror with a strange detachment. “All right,” she said
to herself. “I need to get to the water. I’m thirsty, and I need to clean up this cut.”
Dragging herself along in an awkward crab-walk, she found the creek a quarter mile
away. It took her an hour to get there, but she was upbeat. Good, she thought. Either
this will lead me back to Bear Lake or to the Columbia — either way, I’m saved. She
drank and washed out her injury. The water was pure and beautiful. Magical, she
thought. She could feel it rejuvenating her. Salant took one last sip, then set out down
the creek, scooting along on her butt.
The area to the west of Bear Lake contains some of the country’s tallest timber and
most inhospitable terrain. The stream Salant had chosen to follow is called Lindsey
Creek, and it drops toward the Columbia River in a deep, waterfall-studded gorge so
difficult to navigate that she may have been the first ever to attempt its descent. Still,
she took a moment to admire it. The waterfalls, the ancient forest — they reminded
her why she loved coming to this spot in the first place.
All day long she picked her way carefully down the gorge, clinging to the slopes at
the edge of the creek. She moved methodically, plotting every step, crossing and
recrossing the stream to avoid obstacles, and balancing on fallen logs or clinging to
tree roots. She came to the top of an outcropping above the stream and stopped. There
was seemingly no good way to go. Forward was too steep, backward was too steep,
left was too steep. She could proceed down the opposite bank if she could cross the
stream — but it was a 12-foot drop to the water. For an hour she sat and contemplated
her plight. Then she jumped.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this!” she screamed, hurtling down into the shallow creek.
She landed on her right leg and pitched over onto her side, popping out of the water
seconds later.
“OK,” she said, panting and dragging herself out of the frigid water. “What’s next?”
The waterfalls, the ancient forest — they reminded her
why she loved coming to this spot in the first place.
In the afternoon, she heard a helicopter. Is that for me? One swept overhead, but the
firs obscured her location. Maybe I should just sit in one spot and wait, she thought.
But no — she was too cold for that. Even though the day was warm, the V-shaped
gorge was shaded, and she’d spent all day slipping into the cold water.
Around 4 p.m., just as the sun was hitting the gorge, Salant found a flattish spot
between two trees and curled up to sleep, shivering. Use all your resources, she told
herself. Her tank top had a built-in bra, which she pulled out and folded over her head
for warmth. She removed the drawstring from her shorts, poked holes in her shirt and
shorts just at the hips, and ran the string through to pull them together and seal in the
heat. Then she peeled strips of dry moss from a nearby rock, covering her legs and
stuffing her clothes with it.

She thought about Aric. He must have called for those helicopters. How stupid that
their last exchange had been so nasty. It was Sunday evening now; she was supposed
to be at her students’ birthday party.

Day 3
A
t the first hint of light, she arose, desperate to be moving again. She looked down
at her legs. The gash on her right thigh still yawned fiercely, and the curve of her left
leg made it appear vulnerable, pathetic. She felt that sudden strange detachment again
and a kind of maternal responsibility toward her legs, as if they were children tugging
at her sleeve. God, she thought, can’t you just take care of yourselves?