时间:2018-12-19 作者:英语课 分类:2007年NPR美国国家公共电台


英语课
Nature writer David Gessner believes you don't have to climb Everest or raft the Amazon to find wildness. It's often found much closer to home, in our backyards and in the experiences of daily life.

I believe in mystery.
I believe in family.
I believe in being who I am.
I believe in the power of failure.
And I believe normal life is extraordinary.
This I Believe.

Today our essay for the series This I Believe comes from Wilmington, North Carolina. David Gessner teaches at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and he has a close relationship with Nature. Here is our series’ curator, independent producer Jay Allison.

David Gessner has traveled to many exotic places for his books and essays on the natural world. Those travels, inform his belief, but do not define it. That definition comes closer to home, starting on the beaches of Cape 1 Cod 2, Massachusetts where he spent much of his childhood and where we recorded him reading his essay for This I Believe.

I believe in wildness, both in the natural world and within each of us. As a Nature writer I've traveled all over the world to experience the wild. But some of my own wildest moments have been closer to home, on the same domestic Cape Cod beach I've returned to all my life. In summer this beach is covered with kids, umbrellas and beach balls. But in the winter, the cold clears it of people, and its character changes. From the rocks at the end of the beach I once watched hundreds of snow-white gannets dive from high in the air and plunge 3 into the cold winter ocean like living javelins 4. Then as the birds dove down, I suddenly saw something dive up, a humpback whale breaching 5 through the same fish the gannets were diving for.

"In wildness is the preservation 6 of the world," wrote Thoreau. But people often get the quote wrong and use wilderness 7 instead. While wilderness might be untrammeled land along the Alaskan coast, wildness can happen anywhere, in the jungle or in your backyard. And it's not just a place, it's a feeling. It rises up when you least expect it. In fact, it was while observing my own species, my own family, that I experienced the two wildest moments in my life.

The first happened holding my father's hand while he died. I listened to his final breath, gasping 8 and fish-like, and I gripped his hand tight enough to feel the last pulsings of his heart. Something rose up in me that day, something deep, animal, unexpected, something that I didn't experience again until nine years later when my daughter Hadley was born. Before Hadley's birth, everyone warned me that my life was about to change, the implication being that it would become tamer. But there was nothing tame about that indelible moment during the C-section when the doctor reached into my wife and a bloody 9 head appeared, straight up followed by Hadley's full emergence 10, a wild squall of life as her little arms rose over her head in victory. And it was somewhere around then that I felt the great rush come surging up. Sure it was physiological 11, goose bumps and tingling 12. But it was also more than that, a wild gushing 13, both a loss and then a return to self.

I believe that these moments of death and life give us a reconnection to our primal 14 selves, a reminder 15 that there is something wilder, lurking 16 below the everyday, and that having tasted this wildness, we return to our ordinary lives both changed and charged. So while I'll continue to seek out wild places, I know I don't need to travel to the Amazon or Everest to experience the ineffable 17. It is here on Cape Cod, on the domestic beach where I first walked holding my mother's hand and where I later spread my father's ashes that I learned that my wildest moments are often closest to home. And it is where I now bring my daughter Hadley for our daily walk, secretly hoping that the wild will rise up in her when she least expects it.

David Gessner with his essay for This I Believe, recorded on the beach on Cape Cod. At our website, NPR.org/ThisIBelieve, you can find all the essays in our series and send in one of your own. For This I Believe, I'm Jay Allison.

Next Sunday on weekend edition, a This I Believe essay by Michelle Gardner-Quinn , written for a class at the University of Vermont, two days before she was kidnapped and murdered. Her belief is Reverence 18 for All Life.

Support for This I Believe comes from Prudential Retirement 19.

This is NPR, National Public Radio.


1 cape
n.海角,岬;披肩,短披风
  • I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
  • She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。
2 cod
n.鳕鱼;v.愚弄;哄骗
  • They salt down cod for winter use.他们腌鳕鱼留着冬天吃。
  • Cod are found in the North Atlantic and the North Sea.北大西洋和北海有鳕鱼。
3 plunge
v.跳入,(使)投入,(使)陷入;猛冲
  • Test pool's water temperature before you plunge in.在你跳入之前你应该测试水温。
  • That would plunge them in the broil of the two countries.那将会使他们陷入这两国的争斗之中。
4 javelins
n.标枪( javelin的名词复数 )
  • The heavy infantry blocks moved forward, throwing javelins just before the clash. 在正面交火之前,庞大的兵团会整体向前移动并投掷标枪。 来自互联网
  • Elite mercenaries, originally from Aragon, armed with javelins and light armour. 加泰罗尼亚标枪兵为精锐雇佣部队,最初来自阿拉贡,装备标枪和轻甲。 来自互联网
5 breaching
攻破( breach的过去式 ); 破坏,违反
  • The company was prosecuted for breaching the Health and Safety Act. 这家公司被控违反《卫生安全条例》。
  • Third, an agency can abuse its discretion by breaching certain principles of judge-made law. 第三,行政机关会因违反某些法官制定的法律原则而构成滥用自由裁量权。
6 preservation
n.保护,维护,保存,保留,保持
  • The police are responsible for the preservation of law and order.警察负责维持法律与秩序。
  • The picture is in an excellent state of preservation.这幅画保存得极为完好。
7 wilderness
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠
  • She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
  • Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。
8 gasping
adj.非常的的;流血的;残忍的;adv.很;vt.血染
  • He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
  • He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。
9 emergence
n.浮现,显现,出现,(植物)突出体
  • The last decade saw the emergence of a dynamic economy.最近10年见证了经济增长的姿态。
  • Language emerges and develops with the emergence and development of society.语言是随着社会的产生而产生,随着社会的发展而发展的。
10 physiological
adj.生理学的,生理学上的
  • He bought a physiological book.他买了一本生理学方面的书。
  • Every individual has a physiological requirement for each nutrient.每个人对每种营养成分都有一种生理上的需要。
11 tingling
v.有刺痛感( tingle的现在分词 )
  • My ears are tingling [humming; ringing; singing]. 我耳鸣。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
  • My tongue is tingling. 舌头发麻。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
12 gushing
adj.迸出的;涌出的;喷出的;过分热情的v.喷,涌( gush的现在分词 );滔滔不绝地说话
  • blood gushing from a wound 从伤口冒出的血
  • The young mother was gushing over a baby. 那位年轻的母亲正喋喋不休地和婴儿说话。 来自《简明英汉词典》
13 primal
adj.原始的;最重要的
  • Jealousy is a primal emotion.嫉妒是最原始的情感。
  • Money was a primal necessity to them.对于他们,钱是主要的需要。
14 reminder
n.提醒物,纪念品;暗示,提示
  • I have had another reminder from the library.我又收到图书馆的催还单。
  • It always took a final reminder to get her to pay her share of the rent.总是得发给她一份最后催缴通知,她才付应该交的房租。
15 lurking
潜在
  • Why are you lurking around outside my house? 你在我房子外面鬼鬼祟祟的,想干什么?
  • There is a suspicious man lurking in the shadows. 有一可疑的人躲在阴暗中。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
16 ineffable
adj.无法表达的,不可言喻的
  • The beauty of a sunset is ineffable.日落的美是难以形容的。
  • She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction,as if her cup of happiness were now full.她发出了一声说不出多么满意的叹息,仿佛她的幸福之杯已经斟满了。
17 reverence
n.敬畏,尊敬,尊严;Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称;v.尊敬,敬畏,崇敬
  • He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
  • We reverence tradition but will not be fettered by it.我们尊重传统,但不被传统所束缚。
18 retirement
n.退休,退职
  • She wanted to enjoy her retirement without being beset by financial worries.她想享受退休生活而不必为金钱担忧。
  • I have to put everything away for my retirement.我必须把一切都积蓄起来以便退休后用。
学英语单词
absorption sensors
airportage
al burghuliyah
aquae plumbi
axillary hair grafting
bandwagoner
billet pusher
Bookabie
brushoffs
bucket wheel trencher
carbon dioxide leakage
carcinosectomy
cerol colors
CFU-Blast
chat bot
chihsia age
Chloranthus henryi
Ciidae
cladoselachids
Clematis napoensis
colluvies
convergence indicator
corpora pampiniforme
cost of structures of water project
Daily Chart
decide
derecha
diameter breast height
differential class
digicorin
divert in
dripplekie
earthquake periodicity
Esaki
feed proportioning system
felicitated
field lateral
Fritillaria pluriflora
Galois
general patton
gerle
go at it
grid measuring system
haloalkaliphilic
helical Bourdon-tube
hepatomegalies
insect vector of rice virus
JSIT
Kilómetro 96
kingdom prokaryotaes
lawnmarkets
Los Alamos County
loved ones
low altitude alert system
low-energy path
Lowville
metalexicographical
millimeter wave amplifiers
multiple-word processing
N-methyl-N-nitro-p-toluenesulfonamide (MNSA)
narvas
Ningbo
non-permissive
not see beyond sth
not well maintained
overaccelerating
paleolongitudinal
parapronoe elongata
pedobaptisms
performance-boosting
platinum-blond
PMIC
pockmarked
polden
prepayment of freight charge
prodigence
prosenneahedral
psychomotor seizure
quartz-lens method
rationalizing denominator
redundancy payment
reefer cargo list
reset bias circuit
resource data file
saxter aithe
schne
Sloanea leptocarpa
stick something on
stoicer
straight line body
table-rapping
taking-up equipment
Terrasson-la-Villedieu
the secession
think light of
tog sb up
torsion prime
vaccum xanthate mixer
velvetier
xvth
your telex
youssuf