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Witnessing the Cerrado's wild glory, while also avoiding the afternoon heat, sometimes requires departing with a guide on the national park trails before dawn.
要见证塞拉多的野性之美，但也得避开下午的迫人热浪，有时这意味着你需要在黎明前就跟向导踏上国家公园的某条小径。
Moths flit about your headlamp, crystal fragments glint in the dark.
飞蛾在头灯前乱扑，黑暗中撒着碎水晶般的光点。
There is a crazy amount of noise. Frogs burp, crickets squeak. A cacophony of insects greets first light.
四下里各种响动惊人地盛大。蛙类和蟋蟀在两个声部合奏，不知名的昆虫七嘴八舌地欢迎第一缕晨光。
Some sound like power tools, others like kazoos, and whistles, and buzzers -- a sense of teeming, infinite life.
有的鸣声像电动工具，还有的像卡祖笛、哨子和报警器，汇成踊跃而无穷尽的生命交响曲。
Everywhere are twisted tree branches, the Cerrado staple, and vines dangling down like loose wires.
到处是扭曲的树枝--这是塞拉多的主打特色，还有像松弛的电线一样低垂的藤蔓。
From the undergrowth, ferns stretch their herringbone fronds toward the light.
低处的草木有叶片呈鱼骨状向光打开的蕨类植物。
Brilliant splashes of color pop from the greenery: purple jasmine, red hibiscus.
绿野中点缀着一抹抹明艳的亮色：瓶儿花，红木槿。
A candle bush holds up bright yellow blooms, a grand chandelier. A blue morpho butterfly circles, flying stained glass.
翅荚决明举起明黄色花穗，像华丽的吊灯。大闪蝶打着旋子，是飞行的彩色玻璃窗。
The air is a heavy blanket, and a loamy scent lingers. Termite mounds shaped like witches' hats rise from the soil.
林间空气如同一条厚重的毯子盖在身上，沃土的气味浮动萦绕。白蚁丘从土壤里长出来，形如女巫的尖帽。
A fat lizard lumbers, tongue flitting. Black ants hauling hunks of leaves to their nest look like a procession of tiny windsurfers.
一只胖蜥蜴长舌吞吐，慢慢地爬过。拖着大片树叶列队回巢的黑蚁像小人国的帆板运动员在游行。
A breeze-triggered confetti of white petals tumbles out of a tree. Birds are constant companions -- parakeets, hummingbirds, flycatchers, hawks.
微风从某棵树上吹落飞舞的白色花瓣。鸟儿是从不缺席的陪伴--长尾小鹦鹉，蜂鸟，霸鹟，鹰。
A toucan bobs beak-heavy through the air as if swimming the breaststroke. A pair of flamboyant macaws, mated for life, rainbow over the treetops.
一只犀鸟端着沉重的喙飞过，动作像在空气里游蛙泳。一对终生相守的金刚鹦鹉立在枝头，羽毛艳丽如虹。
The trail steepens up a bouldery slope, and a sound like rolling thunder starts and doesn't stop. It only intensifies, soon drowning out even the bugs.
小径爬上一道石坡后变得陡峭，有类似滚雷的声音传来，隆隆不休而且越来越响，很快盖过了漫山遍野的虫鸣。
Then the forest parts at a rocky outcrop on top of a hill, and there it all is:
在山顶突出的岩台之外，可以看到森林分成两边，
an expansive sweep of untouched Cerrado, not a farm in sight, the green wilderness sliced open by a deep, cliff-walled canyon, the river within hurtling off a stairway of ledges.
再放眼望去就是原汁原味的广大塞拉多荒野，视野中一座农场也没有，绿野被两岸壁立如削的深谷切开，谷底的河奔腾冲下层层叠叠的石台。
The raging waterfalls, the source of the thunder, kick up clouds of mist; the sheer breadth of the view is dizzying and spectacular, the heart of Brazil still beating strong.
水雾弥漫，形成咆哮的瀑布，这就是刚才所闻雷声的来源，这景象的盛大几乎令人晕眩，精彩至极--巴西的心脏仍蓬勃有力地跳动着。
But for how long? The director of Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, a 37-year-old biologist named Nayara Stacheski, says she is fearful.
但这光景还能维持多久呢？沙帕达-杜斯维阿迪罗斯国家公园主管、37岁的生物学家纳亚拉·斯塔切斯基感到忧心忡忡。
The Cerrado could pass any salvageable tipping point in less than a decade.
整个塞拉多地区可能十年内就会越过某个进入不可逆退化的关键点。
"This could all become a desert," she says, and everyone with a stake in the Cerrado will lose.
“这里的一切都可能变成荒漠。”她说，而与塞拉多有利益关系的所有人都会成为输家。
Many Brazilian scientists who specialize in the Cerrado are in general agreement: It's hard to halt, or even slow, the march of progress and the force of consumerism.
许多以塞拉多为专业研究对象的巴西科学家已有共识：很难刹停，甚至减缓社会发展的脚步和消费主义的推力。
"I'm not optimistic," says Guarino Colli, an ecology professor at the University of Brasília who studies the Cerrado's lizards and snakes.
巴西利亚大学生态学教授瓜里诺·科利说：“依我看，不太乐观。”他研究的是塞拉多的蛇和蜥蜴。
Colli indicates that it's not the celebrated areas like the Amazon rainforest, for which people are willing to donate money and fight to protect, that we should worry about, but rather it is the lesser known, vulnerable lands that could determine our fate.
科利指出，我们需要担心的不是像亚马孙雨林这种高光胜地--因为人们已经很乐意为之捐献资金和出力保护了，而是相对少为人知、生态脆弱却可能决定人类命运的地域。
How we treat the Cerrado is, by extension, how we will treat much of the world. What's at risk, according to the National Campaign in Defense of the Cerrado, "is the life of every being."
推而广之，我们对待塞拉多的方式就是我们日后对待世界大部分地区的方式，用“保卫塞拉多全国行动”组织的话说，此间牵涉到“每一个生物的生命”。
There are no simple solutions. Everyone wants inexpensive commodities; if we don't farm the Cerrado, we will have to farm elsewhere.
并没有简单的解决办法。人人都想要廉价商品。如果我们不在塞拉多产粮，就得去其他地方产粮。
Eight billion people need to be fed every day. All nations seek to grow their economy. Nobody is at fault and everybody's at fault at the same time.
80亿人每天都需要吃饭，所有国家都致力于经济增长。不是任何人的错，但又每个人都脱不了干系。
"We all have some responsibility for the devastation of the Cerrado," says Colli.
“我们所有人都对塞拉多的毁坏负有某种责任。”科利说。
Soybean demand is soaring, and the expansion of farmland will almost surely continue. The lure of cheap cheeseburgers is strong.
大豆需求量在飙升，农田的扩张几乎必然会持续。廉价芝士牛肉堡的诱惑令人难以抵挡。
The Cerrado, it's possible, will be a place that few will really miss, until it's closed forever and gone.
塞拉多可能会变成一个少有人顾惜怀念的地方--直到不复存在，永远尘封。
