(a)

I said to Mr. Shen that I wanted to see the new train here.

Mr. Shen said that there are two stations here, one is a passenger station and the other is a freight station, and he asked me which one I wanted to see.

I thought about it for a moment and said that on the way back, I plan to take the passenger train to the nearby big city, so I don't need to look at the bus station now, and I'll talk about it then. Let's take a look at the freight train.

Mr. Shen said the freight train was on the newly built part of town, near the swamp.

So, he took me through the woods, along the edge of the swamp.

(b)

Locals told us that as the population of the town grew, the town hall wanted to expand the area of local agriculture in order to feed more people for self-sufficiency. They took a fancy to the fertile marshes, so they used a lot of agitation to pump water from the marshes, and then developed the drained land for agriculture, planting winter wheat and soybeans.

Previously, this swamp was a separate universe that supported countless species of creatures, but red-headed cranes and wild swans to all kinds of insects in the grass, to all kinds of microorganisms in mud pools and puddles.

After the swamp was drained, these animals migrated and gradually became extinct.

About a year ago, the last wild swans and red-crowned cranes howled mournfully, flew across the gray sky and disappeared into the distance, and since then, the swamp has become more and more lonely. Since our first holiday, we haven't seen wild deer and wild foxes in many years.

In the early years, there was a large brown bear living in the dense forest next to the marshland, which often went out to hunt, and sometimes broke into the town to steal and attack poultry. Many people have encountered it head-on on the roads near the town, and they are terrified.

Later, the government of a nearby large city sent a professional hunting team. When the hunting party arrived, they asked the locals if there were any large carnivores that needed to be hunted. And they called the brown bear.

The hunting team chased the brown bear several times, and at every last moment, the clever bear slipped and escaped.

Later, they used the brown bear's favorite chicken, as bait, and set a trap around the trap with a lot of automatic traps.

The brown bear finally couldn't help but be fooled. It triggered the rifled trigger cable around the trap, and the bullet shot pierced the skull and fell into the trap set by the hunting party.

A few days later, when the hunting party inspected the harvest of traps in various places, they found the huge carcass of the brown bear.

They jumped down and skinned it.

They triumphantly returned to town with a full bear skin, causing a sensation throughout the town.

They put the huge bear skin on display in the town hall for a few days, and then sent it to the big city to make specimens.

Since then, there has been no sign of a bear near Winterlake.

After the train opened, the rate at which wild animals migrated and disappeared became even more alarming.

The locals are worried that if this continues, the wilderness of this place will completely disappear, and the value of being a tourist attraction will no longer exist.

To make matters worse, with the draining of marshlands, newly developed farmland has also experienced problems such as declining land fertility and persistent pests and diseases.

Eventually, it was intuitively realized that there was a deep link between the decline in the number of marshlands and the destruction of diverse organisms, as well as the decline in land fertility, crop yields, and frequent pests and diseases.

As a result of sacrificing the swamp and expanding farming, the land is rapidly becoming salinized and sandy as the swamp ecosystem is destroyed. And on saline and sandy soils, what farmers can eventually cultivate with great difficulty is not so much food as loneliness.

Therefore, starting this year, people have been flooding the drained swamp again, hoping to restore the swamp to its previous state in about three years.

Locals told us that they wanted wild deer, hares, wild swans and other animals to come back.

Although the effect of reclaiming the swamp has not been satisfactory so far, it has finally made a good start, preventing the development trend of further destruction of the local natural ecology.

Mr. Shen said to me, "We humans are so ridiculous. We often ruin the things we love because of excessive greed. ”

He has a very unoptimistic view of the plan to recreate the swamp ecology.

"Humanity can only maintain the existing wilderness from further destruction, protect the existing wilderness, and create another wilderness, which is something that humanity can never do," he said. ”

I nodded, and I said, "It's like it's easy to kill a life, it's much harder to create another one." ”

(b)

We stood next to the tracks near the freight train and watched as a 20-car train carrying timber slowly pulled out of the station.

Every time it passed through the town, the freight train made a deafening, earth-shattering noise.

This terrifying sound, combined with the snowy lights of the train at night, scared away countless wildlife along the line and made nearby residents suffer.

The train proudly traverses the town's fields, forests, swamps, and across lakes, making no secret of its importance.

But Mr. Shen said it also has a humble side: it focuses only on its own normal hustle and bustle, and never crosses the confines along the railroad line to someone else's territory to roar for no reason.

However, this humility will not last long, the highway leading to the town has been successfully planned, and the financing has begun, and it is believed that in a few years, the peace of the town for thousands of years will be completely shattered and lost forever.

(c)

With a certain sense of heavenly loss, I followed Mr. Shen from the train station back to the camp.

That night, Mr. Shen said that he still had a few bottles of rice wine made by the camp and asked me if I would like to accompany him to taste some.

Although I don't drink much, since Mr. Shen wants someone to drink with him, I nod.

We chatted about the past as we drank with each other.

Mr. Shen is full of attachment to every brick, tile, grass and tree here.

He said that this time he went to Africa, I am afraid that I will have to work there for more than 10 years, and the next time I have the opportunity to return here, I am afraid that my hair will be completely white.

Looking at his sentimentality and thinking of the happy days of vacation back then, I also felt quite unpleasant in my heart.

Mr. Shen asked me if I wanted Mr. Yichen.

I said, of course. I miss Mr. Yichen very much. Without his partner, I often felt like I had lost an arm, and I couldn't express myself.

I told Mr. Shen that after Mr. Yichen became a monk, the company quickly chose a new partner for me. However, after changing a few in a row, I feel that the cooperation is not very tacit, and I can't reach the state of being in a good state.

The main reason should be my side.

In order to avoid more unpleasantness, I didn't have a fixed partner for a while, and I did everything by myself, feeling like a lonely ghost, like a rootless duckweed rippling with the waves.

It's like coming on vacation, and I'm here on my own.

Mr. Shen said that when he came to the holiday camp, he would feel better.

I said that although I have a different taste in my heart when I see things and think about people, the loneliness here is more intimate than the loneliness in the writing room.

I feel more grounded in the forest—because Mr. Yichen is also in the forest at this moment, although not in the same forest, although we are separated by the whole Asian continent.

Mr. Shen said: "I don't think Yichen will ever return to us, he has made up his mind and decided to leave us forever from the dust of this world. ”

He said: "Among all the people, except for Liang Xin, I think you will miss him the most." ”

I nodded silently.

Mr. Shen said, "Xinxin, he will come back to see you." Believe me. After being together for so long, mentally speaking, you have long been part of each other. You are inseparable. ”

"But he's not going to go back to his old life," Mr. Shen said, "even if he will come back to see you." ”

I said, "It's okay. ”

I said, "I'm going to follow him." ”8)