One evening, as we lay in our sleeping bags, Marvin told me he'd once tried to leave the Arctic. He'd found a vocational school in southern Canada that offered classes in small engine repair. But years before, Jacob had watched another son taken from home and forced to attend one of Canada's notorious residential schools, where indigenous knowledge and traditions were cruelly repressed. He asked Marvin to stay. Learn the old ways. Keep the family whole.
一天晚上，當我們躺進睡袋時，馬爾文告訴我他曾經想過離開北極。他在加拿大南部找到了一家教授修小型引擎的職業學校。但因為幾年前雅各布的另一個兒子被帶走，人們逼著他進入加拿大一所臭名昭著的寄宿學校，在那里本地的知識和傳統被殘酷的壓制。于是雅各布告訴馬爾文留在這里。按照老一輩的方式生活。一家人在一起。
Marvin didn't regret his decision. He was a father himself and a volunteer fireman in Gjoa Haven. He'd found a job with a company maintaining telephone lines, and he was slowly learning all he could from Jacob. But Jacob also seemed to inhabit a simpler, older Arctic.
馬爾文并不后悔做這個決定。他自己也是個父親，同時還是約阿港的志愿消防員。他找到了一份維護電話線路的工作，并且在慢慢跟隨雅各布學習一切知識。但雅各布只想繼續做一個簡單的北極老人。
The one Marvin knew was complicated. There were fewer opportunities, more drugs. There were social media and the internet. Marvin understood his Arctic was becoming something new. He'd read that the ice was melting, that another war might come north. He knew the weather was different from what he'd known as a child -- not necessarily warmer but more unpredictable.
馬爾文知道的消息很復雜。機會總是不如毒品多。世界上還有社交媒體和因特網。馬爾文知道北極正在變得不一樣了。他讀到冰川正在融化，另一場戰爭就要在北方開始。他知道天氣也變得跟小時候不一樣了--不一定是變得更暖和，只是更加難以預測了。
As for the gold rush he kept hearing about, he couldn't see it. "All these things are supposed to be happening," he told me, referring to the predictions of new infrastructure and jobs to harvest the region's hidden riches. "I don't really feel much change. I definitely don't feel like I'm part of it."
至于他經常聽說的淘金熱，他并沒有見過。提到對新的基礎設施和挖掘這里隱藏的寶藏的工作的預測時，他跟我說：“所有這些事情都是應該發生的。我并沒覺得有很大變化。我覺得我并沒有參與其中。”
The next morning I left camp to scout for caribou with the Atqittuqs and a few others. When a blizzard blew in and swallowed our hunting party, it was Jacob who led us back to camp, using a combination of GPS and some other, inner map. I drove my snowmobile slowly behind Marvin's, nearly blinded by a skin of ice that formed inside my goggles. Soon the world became so intensely white that I could no longer tell where the earth ended and the storm began.
第二天早上我離開帳篷，跟阿提庫父子和其他一些人出去尋找馴鹿。突然到來的一場暴風雪毀掉了我們的狩獵聚會，雅各布用定位裝置和某種內置地圖帶我們回到了帳篷。我慢慢開著雪地車跟在馬爾文身后，眼睛里的冰幾乎快讓我變成盲人。很快世界變成一片白，我再也分不清哪里是地面，哪里是雪暴。
At some point, the balaclava covering my face slipped out of place, exposing an inch of skin. I felt a burning sensation, as though someone had pressed a hot coin to my cheek, but I was busy keeping up. Hours later, in our tent, Jacob saw the burn. He pressed his thumb to it. "Good," he said.
在某一刻，遮住我臉部的帽子開始移位，我的一小塊皮膚暴露了。我感到一種灼燒的感覺，就像是有人拿著一枚燒紅的硬幣按在了我臉上，但我忙著趕路。幾個小時后，在我們的帳篷里，雅各布看見了那塊傷口。他把拇指按上去。他說道：“很好。”
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