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As I stood looking at this meadow of alfalfa in the saddle between two hills, I remembered how he had hauled leaves from the woods and spread them over this field and then plowed them under and let them rot. All that would grow on this ground when he bought it were pines and briars. The pines didn't grow waist-high. There wasn't enough strength in the ground to push them any higher. He cut down the pines and plowed the land. He sowed a cover crop and turned it under. Then he sowed a second, a third, and a fourth. In a few years he had the land producing good crops of corn, wheat and potatoes.
当我站在那里望着两座小山之间的这块苜蓿地时，我想起了他当年是怎样一次次把树林中的落叶拖来，铺在地上，然后用犁把它们翻到土壤下面让它们腐烂的。他刚买下这块地的时候，地里只长松树和荆棘。那松树都长不到半人高，因为地里的那点肥料根本不够让它们再往上长了。他就把松树砍了，把地犁松了，然后种上肥田植物，再犁地把它们翻到土壌下。 然后再种第二次、第三次、第四次。几年工夫，他就让这块地里的玉米、小麦和土豆有了好收成。
"But this is not what I want to show you, Jess," he said. "Come on. Follow me!"
“不过这并不是我要给你看的东西，杰西，”他说道，“来，跟我来！”
I followed him through the pasture gate, then down a little narrow cattle path into the deep hollow.
我跟着他穿过牧场的门，然后顺着窄窄的牲口走的小路，一直往下走到那深深的小山谷。
"Where are we going?" I asked when he started to walk a log across the creek.
“我们上哪儿去？”我看到爸爸走上了横跨溪流的原木，就又问道。
"There," he smiled, pointing toward a wooded mountaintop. "That's the way we are going!"
“就在那里，”他笑笑说，往被林木覆盖的山顶指了指，“那就是我们要去的地方。”
I followed him across the foot log he had made by chopping down a white oak, felling it over the deep stream.
我跟着他走过了原木桥。那是他做的桥，他砍倒了一棵白橡树，让它顺势倒在那条深深的溪流上。
Then we went up the winding footpath under the tall hickory trees, a place where I used to come with him when I was a little boy to hunt squirrels. But that had been nearly thirty years ago.
接着，我们走上了那曲曲弯弯的羊肠小道，路旁都是高高的山核桃树，我小时候常常跟他来这里打松鼠。但是那已经是差不多三十年前的事了。
