The snow was falling and the sky was dark. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

I can't work on a day like this. Everyone squatted by the fire and read by the light.

Jin Tong found a wooden pier as a desktop and squatted to write "Notes on the Great Wilderness".

"Journaling?" Lu Tianxi leaned over.

"Notes, record our life in the Great Northern Wilderness." Jin Tong took a breath of hot air into the palm of his hand, picked up the pen and continued to write.

Lu Tianxi tilted his head and looked at it for a while, and said, "Interesting!" ”

Cao Dong, who was reading "Walden", leaned over and said, "Notes? I'll see. Chapter 4, Digging a Well? ”

Below the title is the inscription:

Day and night

Like a white and a black

Two silent cats

Sleep on your shoulder

These are excerpts from Haizi's review of a poem by Thoreau, the author of Walden. Jin Tong's wishful thinking is to borrow a few lines of later poetry at the beginning of each article.

"Walden" has been published in China for decades, but it has been translated into Daqi and caused a great response in recent years. This book is essentially a counterattack against the money worship and hedonism of industrial civilization in the pastoral era.

Daqi caught up with the tide of the second industrial revolution and successfully transformed into an industrial country, and "Walden" had the basis for becoming popular in China.

The spirit of returning to nature, following nature, reducing material desires, self-sufficiency and advocating poetic dwelling embodied in the book has scratched the itch of contemporary intellectuals in the empire.

It was precisely because of this that Jin Tong was thinking about writing a book of "Notes on the Great Wilderness". The readership is clear, it's the group of people who love Walden.

His purpose is simple, which is to earn manuscript fees! Politics is not taken into account, and even political factors are downplayed as much as possible.

The text can be unpretentious, or even written as a running account, and the description is not afraid of monotony, as long as there are feelings.

What will be shown in front of readers will be the story of a group of strong people who face the cruel natural environment of the Great Northern Wilderness, build their homes unrelentingly, and live a fun life.

Such works may be niche, but they are in line with his identity as his first appearance in the Daqi cultural circle.

……

"Drilling a Well"

…… The move lasted 20 days, and we used horse-drawn plows to carry wheat flour, cabbage and firewood.

The transportation alone would not take that long, but the new camp would require the construction of dormitories, toilets and warehouses before the relocation could be made.

When the new camp is completed, it is far superior to the old camp in terms of function, sturdiness and aesthetics.

Including: two underground manholes, one for men and one for each woman;

two small toilets, one for each sex;

two Eskimo igloos, one for the vegetable cellar and one for the bathroom;

A stilted warehouse modeled after the deer hunter "Oren" - in the grove next to the camp, dried meat, wheat seeds, grain and out-of-season clothing were stored to prevent the invasion of wild animals and small animals;

A horse shed and kennel made of mud and branches - a herringbone skeleton made of a few logs, a mud wall pasted, and then covered with dry sheep grass, and the doors opened at both ends, this is called a horse frame.

When building homes, the knowledge of civilized societies is rarely used.

More often than not, we learn from the deer hunters, from the pioneer Hermes-Epitek, and from the distant Eskimos, and the whole process is like an atavistic ritual that traces back to the roots.

For example, in a tall warehouse, four rectangular diagonal trees are selected, and the heads of the trees are cut off at a height of three meters above the ground, and wooden poles are laid horizontally on top to form a base. Then bend the branches to make a hemispherical roof, cover it with birch bark, tie it with wicker, and open the door on one side.

In order to guard against wild animals, we peeled off the outer skin of the four pillars and polished them smooth so that the animals could not easily climb on them.

In order to make it easier to get things, Mao Zhigang tied two thick tree trunks together and cut a concave grid every other small section to make a ladder.

There are no complex social relationships in the wasteland, only us and nature.

The need to survive is overwhelming, but the work does not feel hard, but there is an illusion of returning to the basics and washing the soul.

This kind of self-touching may be a bit cheesy, but the ancestors of mankind have never been moved to tears by building a warehouse. But how many people are exempt from vulgarity?

…… The daily water is still used by digging ice from the river and pulling it back with a climbing plow. Naturally, digging wells was on the agenda.

First of all, it is necessary to choose a good location and analyze whether the water can be produced. That's not a problem, the best place to dig is behind the manhole where we live, a two-minute walk.

The second step is to prepare materials such as derricks, wheels, and well plates.

The so-called well plate refers to the wooden board on the inner wall in order to prevent the wall from collapsing in the process of digging the well. Our well slabs are made of fine oak wood, which is an inch thick, a foot wide, and a meter long.

Wells should have been drilled in the warm season, as it was difficult to dig up the frozen soil in winter.

Xu Jingjing drew a large circle on the ground as the wellhead. As if it were some kind of blessing ceremony, we made a fire in the center of the circle and let the bonfire burn overnight before the official excavation began the next morning.

Dig a big pit first, big at the top and small at the bottom, and narrow it the more you close.

…… The team of eight men worked all day, and when it was dark, the well was nearly two meters deep, and the bottom gradually narrowed, so that only four people could work at the same time. Everyone was tired, so they stopped and went back to rest.

The next morning, we were all dumbfounded.

I finally dug up the frozen soil, and the fresh soil that was exposed was frozen again! The new tundra is as strong as kraft candy and extremely laborious to dig up.

We also learned a lesson from this and decided to work in groups around the clock.

…… Arm strength alone cannot throw the soil out of the well. Under the command of Mao Zhigang, a derrick was erected at the wellhead, a reel was installed, and a wicker basket was used to lift the soil basket to the surface, and the progress slowed down significantly.

At this point, the mosaic slab begins synchronously. This is a technical job, the wooden planks have to be close to the wall of the well, using the mortise and tenon structure, joined into a hexagonal shape. From the wellhead to the next layer of flooring, it must be tightly seamed.

At first, only Mao Zhigang could do the job, but he taught the skills without reservation, and soon someone could replace him.

After dark, we lit a fire, hung kerosene lamps in the well, and worked in shifts.

Under God's care, there was no rain or snow for a few days when the well was dug, and the moon also shed silver light to illuminate us.

The land of the Northern Wilderness is mixed with pebbles and gravel in the depths, but fortunately, Xu Jingjing's location allowed us to avoid large rock formations. Despite the difficulties, the digging was getting deeper and deeper, and the underground space was only enough for two people to work back-to-back.

Tired of substitution, the resting person sings pop songs every time:

The moonlight was so blurry

The earth cages the night fog

Where are you, man of dreams?

Listen to the ebb and flow of the tide from afar

Matsukaze is wailing

Where are you, man of dreams?

The nightingale cries in the woods

Teardrops on the grass

Where are you, man of dreams?

…… The well is eight meters deep and allows only one person to go down. The air is not circulated, the amount of labor is heavy, and the people who work are panting and sweating.

…… Close to nine meters, no water has yet come out.

Some people worry about digging the wrong place. Xu Jingjing insisted that if she digs a little deeper, she will definitely come out of the water.

Then it was my turn to go down the well. I dug for a while, and found that the soil was different, and there was a feeling of wetness, and when I told the others above my head, everyone cheered, and it was not far from the water!

But after working for more than half an hour, there was still no spring. I was a little tired and climbed up the rope.

Lu Tianxi replaced me. He first laid the slabs and then continued to excavate when he was finished. After only digging a few shovels, he shouted: "Out of the water!" ”

At this time, there was still some residual soil at the bottom of the well, and Lu Tianxi desperately loaded the soil and asked the top to hurry up.

When the water was up to his ankles, he called for us to pull him up. The ground was cold, and his feet were a little cold.

Xu Jingjing brought the padded jacket and asked him to quickly put it on and run, and it took a while to ease up.

…… The sun is setting, and only a red cloud is left to reflect the slope forest. The northern country wrapped in red makeup looks like a colorful oil painting.

In the evening, the girls cooked cabbage dumplings, and everyone ate them until their stomachs were round.

……

"How can you have a round belly? I ate a little more than usual! Lu Tianxi protested when he read this.

"It's an artistic exaggeration." Jin Tong didn't care.

Wu Rui was also interested, and asked for the first few articles of "Notes on the Great Wilderness", read them with interest for a while, and said: "What is popular on the market now is the Mandarin Duck Butterfly Pie. Realistic prose is also liked by some people, and if there is a good reputation, sales may be able to count on it. ”

Cao Dong agreed: "If the communication is convenient, you can send it to the "Pinbao" and publish it issue by issue. They like this tune the most. ”

"It's a pity that there is no post office in the wasteland!" Lu Tianxi sighed.

Wu Rui finished reading the four articles and returned them to Jin Tong, "Brother Ye Fengxian, I support you to continue to write, although you can't publish it, but next winter, let's find an opportunity to send the manuscript out!" I have some friends in the Songjiang literary circle, and I can help a little. ”

"That's right! Publish the notes of the Great Wilderness to the world, and let the people of the whole country know that our Huajie is a group of real heroes! "Lu Tianxi is highly motivated.

Jin Tong didn't think about this from the perspective of publicity, and he wasn't ready to change his original intention and revise the overall idea.

Intentional propaganda is not as good as unintentional divine strokes, and this is probably the case in the world.

"The first four articles are "Going North", "Camping", "Investigation", and "Digging Wells", what will you write about in the next one?" Cao Dong asked.

"Next?" Jin Tong scratched his head, "Let's do the work first, and then I can write!" ”

Wu Rui laughed when he heard this, "This is right!" Whether it is building a home or creating literature, we must be down-to-earth and do the work first! ”