万物简史 第330期:美丽而危险(13)

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

　　traveling with such force and momentum¹ that the leading edge of the landslide² ran four hundred feet up a mountain on the other side of the valley. 其力量和动量是如此之大，前缘竟然冲到了峡谷对面一座山的120米高处。

　　Along its path lay part of the Rock Creek³ Campground. 罗克溪露营园有一部分就在岩石的必经之地。

　　Twenty-eight campers were killed, nineteen of them buried too deep ever to be found again. 28名露营者死亡，其中19名被埋得太深，再也没有找到。

　　The devastation⁴ was swift but heartbreakingly fickle⁵. 灾难发生得又快又难预测。

　　Three brothers, sleeping in one tent, were spared. 有兄弟3人同睡一个帐篷，倒是幸免于难。

　　Their parents, sleeping in another tent beside them, were swept away and never seen again. 他们的父母睡在旁边的另一个帐篷，却被冲得无影无踪。

　　A big earthquake—and I mean big—will happen sometime, Doss told me. "You can count on that.  “大地震——我的意思是大的地震——迟早会发生，”多斯对我说，“我可以向你保证。

　　This is a big fault zone for earthquakes." 这儿是个大断层地带，地震很多。”

　　Despite the Hebgen Lake quake and the other known risks, Yellowstone didn't get permanent seismometers until the 1970s. 尽管发生了赫布根湖地震以及别的危险，直到20世纪70年代，黄石公园才配置了永久性的地震表。

　　If you needed a way to appreciate the grandeur⁶ and inexorable nature of geologic⁷ processes, 若要欣赏地质过程的威力和无情，你肯定挑得出比蒂顿山脉更糟糕的例子。

　　you could do worse than to consider the Tetons, the sumptuously⁸ jagged range that stands just to the south of Yellowstone National Park. 蒂顿山脉位于黄石国家公园以南，峭壁嶙峋，非常险峻。

　　Nine million years ago, the Tetons didn't exist. 900万年以前，蒂顿山脉并不存在。

　　The land around Jackson Hole was just a high grassy⁹ plain. 杰克逊大坑周围的土地本是一片杂草丛生的高地平原。

　　But then a forty-mile-long fault opened within the Earth, 但是，后来地球内部出现了一处64公里长的断层，

　　and since then, about once every nine hundred years, the Tetons experience a really big earthquake, enough to jerk them another six feet higher. 自那以后，大约每隔900年蒂顿山脉就要经历一次大地震，其威力之大足以使它再升高2米。

　　It is these repeated jerks over eons that have raised them to their present majestic¹⁰ heights of seven thousand feet. 由于千万年来这样反复地往上颤动，如今它的高度已经达到雄伟的2000米。

分享到：