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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.
當我站在那里望著兩座小山之間的這塊苜蓿地時，我想起了他當年是怎樣一次次把樹林中的落葉拖來，鋪在地上，然后用犁把它們翻到土壤下面讓它們腐爛的。他剛買下這塊地的時候，地里只長松樹和荊棘。那松樹都長不到半人高，因為地里的那點肥料根本不夠讓它們再往上長了。他就把松樹砍了，把地犁松了，然后種上肥田植物，再犁地把它們翻到土壌下。 然后再種第二次、第三次、第四次。幾年工夫，他就讓這塊地里的玉米、小麥和土豆有了好收成。
"But this is not what I want to show you, Jess," he said. "Come on. Follow me!"
“不過這并不是我要給你看的東西，杰西，”他說道，“來，跟我來！”
I followed him through the pasture gate, then down a little narrow cattle path into the deep hollow.
我跟著他穿過牧場的門，然后順著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.
“我們上哪兒去？”我看到爸爸走上了橫跨溪流的原木，就又問道。
"There," he smiled, pointing toward a wooded mountaintop. "That's the way we are going!"
“就在那里，”他笑笑說，往被林木覆蓋的山頂指了指，“那就是我們要去的地方。”
I followed him across the foot log he had made by chopping down a white oak, felling it over the deep stream.
我跟著他走過了原木橋。那是他做的橋，他砍倒了一棵白橡樹，讓它順勢倒在那條深深的溪流上。
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.
接著，我們走上了那曲曲彎彎的羊腸小道，路旁都是高高的山核桃樹，我小時候常常跟他來這里打松鼠。但是那已經是差不多三十年前的事了。
