美国国家公共电台 NPR--Audio postcard: Spending a day on a forest path in the Silh River valley

（单词翻译）

Audio postcard: Spending a day on a forest path in the Silh River valley

Transcript¹

It's tradition in Switzerland to follow "wander" trails. We hear what it's like to walk along a gorgeous river valley in the hills above Zurich.

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

The world is hectic² and complicated. So we're going to take time for a quick moment of beauty. In Switzerland, there are networks of trails where people have walked for generations and in some places for centuries. On his way home from a reporting stint³ in Ukraine, NPR's Brian Mann spent a day on a forest path in the Sihl River Valley near Zurich. He sent us this audio postcard.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)

BRIAN MANN, BYLINE⁴: It's early morning, ridiculously blue sky. I'm walking down a narrow, little river valley. I'm off on what the Germans and the Austrians and the Swiss call kind of a traditional wanderung. It's sort of somewhere on the border between a hike and a walk.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)

MANN: The last few years and really during the pandemic, I fell in love with walking. Nothing strenuous⁵, nothing ambitious, but especially when I'm on assignment doing something intense or heavy, I try to make time to pull on my battered⁶, old walking shoes.

(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)

MANN: I've reached the stretch of the trail where I'm passing through this really lovely pine forest just awash in these foamy⁷, white flowers. It's literally⁸ like seafoam in the green all around me.

(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)

MANN: This is Switzerland, so you might picture the Alps or high mountain country, but this isn't that. This trail is easy walking through meadows and cool, shadowy forest, all just a short distance outside the city. It's also still and private. I hardly see anyone else.

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER FLOWING)

MANN: Feels good on my face and neck.

I find little springs along the path, ice-cold water pouring into old stone basins where I can splash my face and cool off. I also spend time just sitting and listening.

(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)

MANN: I've climbed now up into the deeper forest. It is like a fairy tale here - little mountain streams, beams of sunlight cutting through the trees, catching⁹ hillsides of purple and yellow blossoms.

(SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING)

MANN: Absolutely nothing dramatic happens on this wanderung. But as I walk, moving at this slower pace in this beautiful place, the tug¹⁰ of deadlines and the busy world eases just a little.

Brian Mann, NPR News.