【英语趣味课堂】迷路-Lost

Todd: So Norm¹, you said you have a pretty good story about going hiking and you almost got dehydrated.

 

Norm: Yes, it was, we were on our first day of, it was a six day hiking trip in a national park in Quebec, Canada, and I had not done the itinerary², but my friend had figured out that the first day we could walk 19 1/2 kilometers in the wilderness³. I mentioned that, I would have gone for 10 kilometers, do the first stop at the first campsite, but I didn't realize that he was more optimistic than I was, and so we started

out on our first day and very heavy backpack, about 24 kilograms, and very hot day, 30, 32 degrees with hot humid day, and the first day was up and down, up and down, all the time, so at the end of the day, mistake number 1 was we passed sort of a small river

and we didn't refill our bottles because we thought we were almost at our destination, the lake, but it was further than we thought so we ran out of water and darkness set upon us and we were up on a huge rock, and what had happened was, we were at the lookout⁴ and 

because we were tired, we were supposed to go left. We went right, so we backtracked, and I, after about five minutes, I mentioned to my other three colleagues I said, we've been here before, I said we're backtracking. All three of then said, how can you tell, I said, I remember

these particular trees. I said I noticed them all, and they "There are thousands of trees here. You must be mistaken. I said well I'm sure. So they say "No, no. no. It can't be. We're going in the right direction and so we back tracked, and by this time we never got to our camp ground and so we had to stop and we had no water. We hadn't had any water for about two hours, three hours, and so they were kinda, didn't know what to do, but I saw that there was a swamp⁵ at the bottom, and I said, "there's water!" Well!, so two of our colleagues stayed up with the tents and I went went down with a friend of mine and it took up an hour just to go down to the swamp, because it was not a path, just there we boulders⁶ and big rocks, and we had to go around many obstacles⁷, and then by the time we got to the swamp, it was really dark, so I tied the bottle to a rope and I just threw it in the middle of the swamp to try and get as least dirt as possible and then use my shirt to filter⁸ it

into a pot. We had brought with us, to the swamp a pot and a heater, so that we could boil the water. we would, we were very dehydrated, if we hadn't drank at that time, we wouldn't have been able to go back up, so I said we need to replenish⁹ our bodies with water, then we'll come back up. So by this time is was pitch dark and my friend had this little hand flashlight that is, didn't last 45 minutes, but luckily I had

my headlamp and I had just replaced my batteries and that can work 24 hours non stop so we used my single head lamp to go back up but it took up two hours to get back up so we had gone down about 8:30. We left the camp and it was close to midnight by the time we got up. Yeah, total darkness, and because we were on, just on, we could set up tent was a rock, that was like a round, rounded rock, and they set up 

their big tent, but I couldn't sleep in the tent, because it was just no room, so I just put my sleeping bag on the rock and just slept the whole evening. Luckily for me it didn't rain and and I managed to spend, had a fairly good night sleep. So then the next day you just hiked back to your home? No the next day we had, I had brought some re-hydrating salts and that night when we came back with all the water I told everyone that we should put this in the water and then the next morning we felt much better, but then, this time we had light, proper light, sunlight and we looked at the topological map and then we figured out that where we had gone wrong. We were just barely¹⁰ forty minutes away from where we should have been before we made the wrong turn. We were actually very close, but when we backtracked that was our mistake, so 45 minutes later we were at the next lake where there were facilities for setting¹¹ up our tents, and we were so exhausted¹² that

we spent the whole day sleeping before continuing on our trip.

 

1 norm   

n.标准，规范，平均数

参考例句：

• Of his age,the child is above the norm in arithmetic.在他那个年龄，这个孩子的算术能力是超过标准的。
• These events were aberrations from the norm.这些事件不合常规。

2 itinerary   

n.行程表，旅行路线；旅行计划

参考例句：

• The two sides have agreed on the itinerary of the visit.双方商定了访问日程。
• The next place on our itinerary was Silistra.我们行程的下一站是锡利斯特拉。

3 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

4 lookout   

n.注意，前途，瞭望台

参考例句：

• You can see everything around from the lookout.从了望台上你可以看清周围的一切。
• It's a bad lookout for the company if interest rates don't come down.如果利率降不下来，公司的前景可就不妙了。

5 swamp   

n.沼泽，湿地；v.淹没，陷于沼泽

参考例句：

• The swamp teems with mosquitoes.这片沼泽地蚊子多极了。
• The water in the swamp is foul.沼泽中的水很臭。

6 boulders   

n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 )；巨砾；（受水或天气侵蚀而成的）巨石；漂砾

参考例句：

• Seals basked on boulders in a flat calm. 海面风平浪静，海豹在巨石上晒太阳。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The river takes a headlong plunge into a maelstrom of rocks and boulders. 河水急流而下，入一个漂砾的漩涡中。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 obstacles   

n. 干扰；障碍

参考例句：

• I think most of these obstacles can be surmounted. 我认为这些障碍大多数都是可以克服的。
• There's no formidable obstacles in the world. 世上没有无法逾越的障碍。

8 filter   

n.滤器，过滤嘴；v.过滤，透过

参考例句：

• Foreign influence began to filter into the country.外国势力开始渗透进这个国家。
• Charcoal is used to filter water.木炭是用来过滤水的。

9 replenish   

vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满

参考例句：

• I always replenish my food supply before it is depleted.我总是在我的食物吃完之前加以补充。
• We have to import an extra 4 million tons of wheat to replenish our reserves.我们不得不额外进口四百万吨小麦以补充我们的储备。

10 barely   

adv.仅仅，几乎没有，几乎不

参考例句：

• The male bird is barely distinguishable from the female.雄鸟和雌鸟几乎无法辨别。
• He took barely enough money to keep the children in bread.他赚很少的钱仅够孩子们勉强糊口。

11 setting   

n.背景

参考例句：

• The play has its setting in Vienna.该剧以维也纳为背景。
• Where and when a story takes place is called the setting.故事发生的地点和时间称为故事背景。

12 exhausted   

adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的

参考例句：

• It was a long haul home and we arrived exhausted.搬运回家的这段路程特别长，到家时我们已筋疲力尽。
• Jenny was exhausted by the hustle of city life.珍妮被城市生活的忙乱弄得筋疲力尽。