國家地理:融化的北極正使一場新的冷戰(zhàn)升溫(14)

On our last evening in camp, well after the sun had set, a small group of young Inuit roared in on snowmobiles. The rangers greeted them, cigarettes began to glow. It was cold but not that cold. The men had been hunting caribou somewhere in the west, without luck.

在我們住帳篷的最后一夜，太陽落山后，一小群年輕的因紐特人騎著雪地車趕來。士兵們跟他們打了招呼，他們點燃香煙，天氣很冷但還沒到受不了的程度。這些人本來在西部的某個地方打獵，但運氣不太好。

Suddenly one of the newcomers stumbled into the crowd. He was upset and told of a young man who had been riding in the sled he was towing. The passenger had disappeared. He must have fallen off somewhere out on the tundra. Marvin and other rangers asked for more details, but the young man could only shrug and point. Here was the sort of search-and-rescue mission the rangers had trained for. But before Atqittuq could organize it, a pair of rangers suited up and throttled off.

突然他們中某個人沖進人群。他很著急的說之前有個坐在他雪橇上的人不見了。他肯定是在冰原的某個地方摔下來了。馬爾文和其他人想問更多的細節(jié)，但這個年輕人只說不知道。于是士兵們經常執(zhí)行的搜索救援任務就派上用場了。但就在阿提庫組織之前，幾個士兵已經收拾好出發(fā)了。

We watched their headlights streak into the darkness, grow fainter, vanish. Then most of us wandered back to our tents to wait and listen for the whine of returning machines. We made tea. Marvin seemed concerned but not overly so; the missing Inuit had been raised in the Arctic and knew what to do if he found himself alone on the ice. I thought of the bears spotted a couple of days before and tried to imagine what the young man was doing out there. Maybe he was singing hymns.

我們看著他們的頭燈走進黑暗里，變得微弱，消失。然后大部分人都走回帳篷里等待，等著回來的引擎的嗡嗡聲。我們煮了茶。馬爾文看起來很擔心他們的狀況，但并不十分焦急；那個失蹤的因紐特人是在北極長大的，他知道自己落單后應該怎樣做。我想起了幾天前看見的熊，試著想象他此刻在干什么。也許他在唱頌歌。