It snowed yesterday. Today the world is white. I put on
my boots and walked to Enchanted Hill.
It was as pure and perfect as a new sheet of paper①.
I took one step onto the field and stopped.
What was I doing?
The pure whiteness, dazzling in the sun,
was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Who was I to spoil it? Snow falls. Earth says: Here—a gift for you②.
And what do we do? We shovel it. Blow it. Scrape it. Plow it.
Get it out of our way③. We push it to our fringes.
Is there anything uglier or sadder than a ten-day-old snow dump?④ It’s not even snow anymore. It’s slush.
Was that beginning to be us, Leo?
I’d rather never see you again than have that happen.
We were once so fresh, a dazzling snowfield.
Let’s promise to each other that if we ever meet again
we will never plow and push our new-fallen snow.
We will not become such.
We will stay like this field and melt away together only
in the sun’s good time.
I backed off carefully, stepping out of the one footprint,
and walked away.
美文欣赏
①“as a new sheet of paper” is a simile,
which means “very pure and perfect.”
Sometimes, we can also say “a piece of blank paper/ virgin paper”
to mean “very pure.”
②When the author says, “Earth says: Here—a gift for you”, he wants to tell us that the snow
is a gift sent by heaven, so we should value it rather than abuse it.
③“Get it out of our way” here simply means
that we wrongly regards the snow as sort of
obstacles in the way so we busies ourselves
in removing the snow out of the way.
④“Is there anything uglier or sadder than a ten-day-old snow dump?” means that when we have piled
the snow into the snow dump, it is the ugliest scene in the world.
It is a great pity, as the snow in the beginning
is a gift sent by heaven, a sign of beauty.
But we have mis-disposed of the snow and kept sweeping for ten days
all the snow until the dump is formed,
we have not only destroyed something beautiful,
but also created something ugly.
阅读练习
Please answer the following questions based on what you have read in the passage.
1. What did the girl do before she walked to Enchanted Hill?
2. What did the white world strike the girl as?
3. What did the girl do when the snowy world came in her sight?
4. How did she deem the pure whiteness of the snowy world?
5. What kind of tone was suggested when she asked herself “Who was I to spoil it?”
6. Please give a list of things that people regularly do with snow.
7. Where do you think lies the difference between new-fallen snow and piled slush?
8. Which adjective did the girl use to define her relationship with the boy?
9. What is her cherished wish toward the end of the diary?
10. Why did she back off carefully and step out of “the one footprint”?
■词汇卡片
【pure】
adj.1.纯净的;洁净的。The air is pure and fresh. 2.纯洁的;无瑕的。I want to make friends with people with a pure nature.
【perfect】
adj.1.完美的。Practice makes perfect. 2.精确的,绝对正确的。What he said at the meeting made perfect sense.
【step】
n.跨步;脚步。The bookstore is around the corner, only a few steps away.
【dazzling】
adj.耀眼的;炫目的。People were enchanted by the princess’ dazzling beauty.
【spoil】
v.1.损坏;损害。Too much homework spoiled my holidays. 2.宠坏,溺爱。Spare the rod and spoil the child.
【shovel】v.铲起。
【scrape】v.刮。She scraped the mud off her boots.
【fringes】
n.边缘。These people live on the fringes of society.
【dump】
n.垃圾。a dump truck
v.1.倾卸;倾倒。He dumped the boxes down in the kitchen. 2.摆脱。These plans are not practical and have been dumped.
【slush】n.雪泥。
【back(off)】
v.1.向后退。2.支持。The president is backed by a large population in this state.
■知识扩展
[out of one’s way]
不/别挡着别人的路。opposite:in one’s way
He will make ceaseless efforts to remove obstacles standing in his way.
上海外国语大学教授、博士生导师史志康供稿