Chapter 3 denver city

The city is a lonely city.The mountain is the Manren Stone Mountain.The city is in the new Western Regions.The Western Regions are in the new continent.The New World in the early autumn of 1969.You ask: Who is Zhang Qian?All the poplars shook their heads in the wind, Xiao Xiao.But even the New World isn't too new.Four hundred years ago, it was still a place haunted by various races of the Red Fan. The warriors of Xia Yin and Arapa Huo roared past with their horses and horses.Then came the Spaniards.Then came the Confederate cavalry.Suddenly, a cry came out: "Gold, gold, gold!" Then a raging tide of gold rush was summoned, shouting and heating up the desolate west.So Omaha, Denver, and Reno sprang up out of thin air.I was the last one who came to teach the descendants of the gold diggers how to mine the literature of the B.C. East—another kind of gold mine, more expensive and deeper.This matter, if you don't think about it, don't think about it, and if you think about it, it will make people feel strange.

When I think of the Western Regions, I feel so far away and so empty.The same goes for the New West.Colorado is seven times the size of Taiwan and has a population less than one-seventh that of Taiwan.So go west out of Yangguan, no, I mean go west out of Denver, and immediately there will be fewer cars and fewer people.In fact, the modern post roads in the four alleys of the New Western Regions are just thousands of miles of concrete wasteland, which can only be driven by cars, not pedestrians.Often, after driving for dozens of miles, there is no one to see, but deer, rabbits, skunks and the like pass by the front of the car from time to time.Going out of Yangguan in the west, not only do you not see old friends, you can't even see celebrities.

I saw mountains.on the left.on the right.in front.is behind.underfoot.on the top of the forehead.Only the mountain will always be there, and the popular people can't move it away, and the gold diggers can't find it empty.In Denver, along any parallel street to the west, the distant view is always the mountains.Leaving Denver in the west, Fang felt that the terrain was becoming more and more dangerous. He was surprised that Shi was in power, and within a minute, he had already fallen into the siege of all the peaks.As a result, the rocky mountains that cover the sky and block the land compete with each other, intersecting with the blue sky, like rocks playing a game of stacking arhats.It is simply impossible to judge which Arhat is the tallest in the end.Because after three twists and nine bends, you thought you should reach the peak now, but when you turned another slope, you found that behind, no, there was another peak on it, proudly uprooted beyond all excuses, and raised a new challenge.In this way, mountains grow outside the mountains, and rocks are lifted on top of rocks, forcing the sky to have nothing to give up.Because this is Colorado, the Great Stone Empire in the New Western Regions, where stone is everything.The Rocky Mountains are the fossils of prehistoric giant dinosaurs. The coils are winding and stretching for thousands of miles. The dragon head is in Colorado, and there is still a tendency to look back and exhale into clouds.For the Great Stone Empire, the United States of America is just a combination of two hillsides, because the so-called "Continental Divide" (Continental Divide) has the same nose bridge, which cuts across the state border of Colorado.I say this is the Great Stone Empire, because some of the most noble nobles in the stone are gathered here and become a court that will never retreat.There are fifty-four snow peaks above 14,000 feet above sea level in Colorado, and there are hundreds of millions of megatons of granite gneiss on top of the overlapping blue sky. The white eyes seem to have a cold voice saying: the whitest is the tallest.It's no wonder that the sunset in Denver is particularly early. When I go out at 4:30, it gets dark.Looking west at the rocky peaks, how many heavy green screens are horizontally obstructing them!Westbound vehicles, circling up and down for work, fell into a layer of deep mountain shadow after three o'clock in the afternoon.

A tree is a kind of life that loves to climb mountains, but when the mountain is too high, the tree will not be able to climb it.Thousands of poplar trees form forests in autumn. Under the sun that is too ripe, they turn thousands of layers of gold against the cold mountain wind, reflecting people's eyebrows and eyes, and maintaining a dynamic beauty in the brilliant autumn colors.Shipeng opera calls it a "money tree", which turns vulgarity into elegance and is humorous.For example, Bai Yang, after climbing to more than 8,000 feet, stops there collectively, and can no longer climb up.No matter how high it is, only pines and firs with straight needles can climb.But once the height exceeds 12,300 feet, the so-called "timber line" (timber line) is crossed, even the noble and tall cypress trees can't bear the bitter cold, and sometimes the whole forest will be dead on the ridge, with pale trunks standing parallel to each other. It was shocking, when the car passed by, it was like reviewing a long line of dead zombies.

Once deep into the mountain, it feels a little strange.The air is so thin, it's hard to breathe, and it's like the entire Rocky Mountains are on your chest.At the same time, tinnitus, dry mouth, dizziness and astringent eyes, temporarily produce a so-called "vertigo" symptom.The day after Christmas, Ye Shan flew to the mountain city from the west bank, drank and discussed poetry, talked about the world, talked with each other, and flied after Qixi Festival.As soon as he got off the jet, he suffered from all kinds of diseases, and he suffered from mountain sickness.He lived in Berkeley for three years, where the altitude is only 75 feet. When I said that the altitude of Denver is 5,280 feet, he was immediately distraught. .Knowing that the legends such as Zhenxia meal dew, riding a crane and listening to pine trees, etc., may be expected to belong to the family of the long-term prince Qiao. It is really hard for ordinary people like us who can't throw away their ID cards and can't lack of special medicine Period.Qiao Miao, Fei Changfang's prince, is irresistible, that's all.After coming to the Dashi Empire, I often miss two people who are both immortal and ordinary: one is Li Bai, and the other is Mi Fu.Of course it would be unfair not to mention Su Shi, but it is obviously not suitable for people who are too cold to go to the Rocky Mountains.As for Han Yu's "chicken" spirit, he went up to Huashan Mountain but didn't dare to go down, and sat on the ground and cried loudly. The "fear of heights" has obviously entered the third stage, so it doesn't matter if he doesn't come to Colorado.Every time Li Bai climbed a height, he was so excited that it was ridiculous and cute.On the top of Mount Emei, the madman "Yu Yi Neng Gaoyong" actually "did not dare to speak loudly, for fear of frightening the people in the sky", he was really stupid.Just driving with such a person is really worrying about safety.I'm in Denver and I've got four citations for driving violations.If Li Bai had been replaced, Doujiu would have received a hundred summonses.As for Mi Fu's stone epilepsy, seeing strange stones, he must dress up and worship, which is also a particularly good target for psychological analysis.I think he may suffer from a "rock complex", just as Qu Yuan may suffer from "floramania".Shi Qi must worship, what is the intention?Do you want to worship it for its beauty and antiquity, or for its majestic horns?Do you worship its steadfastness, or its divine bone and fairy appearance?In short, if such a stone-crazy stone addict climbs a rocky mountain, it must be very impressive. Maybe it will really fall down, and the cicada will become a stone worshiper.

All in all, when climbing, the physical discomfort is secondary, and the psychological anxiety may be even more difficult to rule out.Human beings are things, so humble and self-contained that they are really pitiful.After going up the mountain, you are close to the sky and far away from people. On the one hand, you are inexplicably excited and admiring yourself, but on the other hand, you are terrified and indescribable, frightened and suspicious.This is because the soul has nowhere to escape before the naked nature when one ascends to the top, and man's capacity to accept greatness and beauty is limited, and if he exceeds this limit once, he will feel overwhelmed.It is terrible to throw a timid self into Dahua without reservation.When a drop of water falls into the sea, does it join or is it absorbed?Is it the joy of joining, or the fear of being swallowed?This sense of invincibility is probably the inversion of the so-called "autism".Maybe this kind of feeling is actually a magnified "autism", because after entering the mountain deep, you will become a prisoner in the mountain, and you can be surprised if you look around with strange rocks and dangerous walls.Because people have been pampered by civilization, once they are out of the world of mortals and surrounded by the sound of the city, the strange silence makes him uneasy.So the distress of modern man is twofold: in industrial society, he feels alone and helpless, but once he is immersed in nature, he still finds it difficult to appreciate it.

Regardless of whether you see the mountain when you enter the mountain or you don't see the mountain when you enter the mountain, it is a fact that the mountain is always there.Perhaps it is better to see Nanshan leisurely than to step through famous mountains.Often, when driving in the busy streets of Denver, a line of green hills will appear leisurely in the corner of the car window, which is the most moving and refreshing.My office at Sizhong Women's College is on the fourth floor of Cuide Hall. On the sloping red tiles, three or five gray pigeons walk around from time to time, muttering about their sleepiness and tenderness all afternoon.Occasionally, over the top of the tall oak trees, over the Confederate Stars and Stripes in the wind, and the bell tower of Whitley Church yonder, the undulating mountains of the Rocky peaks poured through the window, seemingly unreal.At such a distance, the majestic mountain presents only a vague outline, faintly visible like the sound of a stringed piano.The most magnificent is the snow queen. The late autumn sun is exceptionally bright, reflected on the snow peak fifty miles away, and the golden-red rays of light are swaying on the white. That delicate and delicate image makes all myths seem possible. .

Every weekend, my car always points northwest, because Shi Peng teaches at the University of Colorado, twenty-five miles northwest of Denver, and his home is under the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.That mountain city is called Boulder, which means huge rock.Once you get off the Super Boulevard, you enter the urban area. The steep and steep mountain is forced at the end of the street, lifting such a heavy blue and dark green, overlooking the sky above the town, making you unable to lift your eyelashes.As you get closer, the mountain rises more and more, and the sky shrinks correspondingly. Finally, huge rocks compete, and the cliff cuts upwards, and you are completely exposed to the coveted rocks.Every time I enter Boulder, I have to take a deep breath and sit up straighter.

Arriving at Yang's house at the foot of the mountain, it was like being at home, either drinking and discussing opera with Shipeng (he is a drama professor at the University of Science and Technology of China), or playing a game of chess with his hospitable wife Weiquan.After dinner, there are at least two suppers, which always end with a ghost story.After midnight, the town and the mountains fell into a deep sleep, and the three of them went upstairs to sleep amidst the phantoms.They set up a bed for me in the small study upstairs, which I jokingly call "Chen Fan's couch".The study of a drama professor is inevitably covered with all kinds of masks.Some Beijing operas, although angry and frowning, are not very scary. There is only a kabuki face, with a lime-white powder surface, a pair of narrow eyes that seem to be smiling but not smiling, and a black ink that is not a tooth but a tongue is chewing between the red lips. What, there is a hint of ferocity in the charm.As soon as I entered the door, her eyes stopped on my face, making my back numb.So the first thing is to take her down and put it in a drawer.Then in the faint snoring of the Rocky Mountain, I told myself that it was safe enough, and then I reluctantly wrapped the blanket tightly and fell asleep.In the early morning of the next day, when the curtains were opened, most of them were mountains, and a small part was the sky.And what pushes the sky aside is the Aoduben Peak, standing tall above the mountains and above the white mist, so eye-catching, it seems that as soon as you stretch out your arms, it will dye the grass and moss on your hands.From Boulder we often went deep into the Rocky Mountains.In September, I went to Mid-Levels to see the poplar grove, showing off its gold in the wind. On the way back, I tied a branch of poplar to the antenna of the car, and captured some autumn colors.At midnight on the Mid-Autumn Festival, we drove all the way to the top of the mountain, overlooking the night market in Bode, 3,000 feet down, amidst the ear-filled pines.Perhaps it was a psychological effect, the moonlight that night was particularly clear, as if a shake of the coat could shake off the mercury all over the ground.Behind the mountains is the plain, the desert, and the sea. On the other side of the sea is the island, and on the other side of the island is the mainland.But apart from the silent Qinghui, the moon above her head said nothing.Unable to resist the cold wind at high places, we finally hid in the car, circled and drove down the mountain.

The mountain peaks under the moon, the fantastic scenery, can only be compared with the peaks in the snow.First, Shipeng said for more than a month that he must go to his house when it snows, drink wine and listen to operas around the hot pot, and then go up the mountain in the snow to see lakes and mountain streams covered with ice.He had already prepared wine, peanuts and a big pot of appetizers, but it didn't snow.Then one morning in early October, I woke up in a strange silence and felt a strange light in the room.Then it turned out that it was just a reflection, a flowing layer of white light floating on the ceiling.It was lonely all around, and there was no sound of traffic on the street below.Knowing something was wrong, I immediately put on my clothes and got up.As soon as I pulled the window curtain, I was slapped head-on with that big white face, which made me gasp.It seems that with a swipe of his stick, someone blows up the city of Denver, which is made of steel and concrete, into a fairytale magic land. The cold tenderness covers everything during the day and night.All the branches hang upside down like weeping willows, unable to bear the weight of white velvet.Except for a few wisps of gray smoke curling up from the white pipe in the chimney, the dazed Bai has no regrets and everything is wrapped in a daze of forgetfulness.As far as the eye can see, the Rocky Mountain Peak has turned its heavy Shen Xiong and Canggu feathers into a plate of cream cakes that weigh a few pounds, as if a cat can lick it clean.White.White.White.Baiwai is still Baiwai is still a flawless white that does not distinguish between county boundaries or state boundaries, such hexagonal crystals, such careful elf patterns are connected inch by inch, forming a thousand miles of nothingness, nothing is beautiful, And new snowflakes continue to fall like billions of parachutes, landing on the cake in the Rocky Mountains, on the church bell tower over there, on the antenna of other people's TV, and finally on my hatless hair.When I rushed to the street and opened my arms, I almost wanted to yell, but I just murmured: "Dong, Dong, you are really here. I want to take a big bunch of them back and put them in an airmail envelope. Send her a kind of tender yearning, beauty. The distress signal said that I have become a prisoner of the mountain and then a prisoner of the snow. White is besieging me.The snowflakes continued to fall, tiptoeing, silently clinging to my coat.The snowflakes continued to fall, like a group of clever elves playing hide-and-seek with me. When I started the car, I used the wipers to drive back and forth the snow on the windshield.

The most enjoyable was on the second day, when the heavy load of snow bent the branches of maple elm and black oak and caused many broken branches.There are some broken branches vertically and horizontally on every street, and the cars zigzag around them, which has another kind of elegance.Walking through the two-lane boulevard, there are squeaking snow splashes below, and scattered snow blocks from the tall branches from time to time, slamming on the roof of the car, or falling on the windshield On the ground, a burst of whirling white graupel was raised.This kind of beautiful surprise is the most exciting, so I shouted as I accelerated, excited like a shepherd on horseback.I have also experienced two frozen winters in Michigan in the Five Lakes Plain, where the snow is deeper and the ice is thicker, but there is no such surprise phenomenon, because it snows in the Midwest, and it always falls around Thanksgiving. The autumn colors are old, the leaves are all gone, but there are still branches, so the snow load is not heavy.The city of Denver is one mile high, so the so-called heights are unbearably cold. From the end of September to the beginning of October, it starts to snow. Some trees have not yet fallen yellow leaves, some trees are still green, and some are full of broken branches. Spectacular.On the third day, when the snow turns into ice, the branches and branches turn into clumps of crystal corals, and where the wind blows, there is a sound of clashing.Icicles hang down from the eaves of the house, and with a wave of the stick, broken crystals fall all over the ground.The front of my white car is also covered with icicles. It looks like a big messy white cat, embarrassed and ridiculous. The high place is extremely cold, and the city of Denver, which stands alone on the roof of the New Western Region, has been hit by snowstorms nine times since autumn.When the snow was heavy, the city of Denver was huddled in the sub-zero temperature, as if it was facing an enemy. Some people put on snow tires, and some put iron chains on the tires. They rumbled and rumbled, giving off the prestige of heavy tanks.All the snowplows from the State Highway Bureau were dispatched to defend the airborne Winter White Brigade. In addition to snow removal, they also sprayed sand and salt on the hard snow and ice on the road to maintain the traffic of hundreds of thousands of vehicles.I neither change snow tires, nor can I endure the persecution of the ear nerves from the iron chains, so I got stuck in the deep snow several times, and had to rely on the strength of passers-by or a trailer as huge as a giant praying mantis to overcome the beautiful and dangerous "White disaster".Of course, this undefended car can only circle Denver.Go up a 10,000-foot snow-capped mountain without snow tire chains, and the gatekeepers will stop you from going forward.When a real blizzard hits, the ground is covered with several feet of snow, the sky is covered with snow and fog, and the road bureau will close the mountain at the dangerous pass, so all vehicles, from rampant stingrays to violent American The leopard came from a row of heaven and earth, and his physique was as heavy as a train carriage, so he could only die in winter. At the beginning of the ninth blizzard siege of Denver, Ye Shan flew to this isolated city from the west coast across the ten thousand stone peak.It can be said that he rode on the back of the snow, because it took less than two minutes to pick him up from Denver International Airport, and the light white rain fell down so gracefully and slowly.Ye Shan was greatly moved, saying that since leaving Iowa, it has been three years since there was snow.I said what Iowa did in the past. Now that I am here in the snowy country of the mountain country, let's have a good chat.That night when Zhong Ling flew from Wisconsin, we went to pick her up again, and we talked upstairs in my room in the middle of the night before sending her back to the hotel in the snow.It was Christmas time at that time, and the "Modern Language Association" held its annual meeting in Denver. Scholars of various languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and even Chinese and Japanese, attended the meeting as many as 8,000 people. For a moment, he gritted his teeth and murmured, as if he had arrived at the Tower of Baibo.The next day, when Ye Shan was going to a meeting, I said, "Eight thousand scholars, there is no shortage of you. If you don't go, it's like a penguin is missing in Antarctica. Who knows!" Ye Shan found an excuse for his laziness, Feeling at ease, as expected, I didn’t do much work. I just hatched with me every day. At night, I lit the jasmine candle Zhong Ling gave me. The first watch, the second watch, and the third watch. bed to go.Before leaving, in order to send him to the 7:00 a.m. plane in time, I specially bought a gorgeous German alarm clock and put it next to his pillow.Unexpectedly, it was completely quiet when it arrived, so we had to postpone it until the next day.On an extra day out of thin air, the snow cleared and the clouds opened, the blue sky and the golden sun were sunny and cold, as hearty as a Nordic beauty.I drove Ye Shan south to Kequan to visit the famous "Paradise of the Gods".The car passed Liang Shiqiu Wen Yiduo's alma mater, Ye Shan suggested why not check the "details" of the two former sages.I smiled and said, "Forget it." The next morning, the alarm clock rang and my guest left.A row of empty wine bottles on the ground is his result of Qixi Festival.And the snow is still falling. By the time Liu Guosong carried forty pieces of sun, moon, cloud and smoke over Daya Rocky and flew down to Denver, the ninth snowfall was coming to an end.As a painter, Guosong neither smokes nor drinks alcohol, not even beer, and is more puritanical than me.I often laugh at him for being neither cloudy nor rainy.But when it comes to Taotie, he is much better than me.So the wind came from the northwest, blowing the aroma of the rice on the Seapen stove, and the next moment, our white car was speeding on the highway between Denver and Boulder.It was mid-afternoon when we arrived in Bode, and the cloudy and cold day had already set to the west.First, a few days ago Shi Peng and I kicked the fresh snow up the mountain, under the shining cliff, and said that Guosong should come to worship such a snow scene.Now that the painter comes, we push him into the painting.The car circled upwards on the mountain road where dragons and snakes are black and white, and the ice walls on both sides faintly reflect the cold sunset.In the lonely sky and the lonely land, thousands of mountains and thousands of mountains are trapped in a kind of clear and ancient cold dream, as if reminiscing about some things in the ice age.Perhaps the white-haired Longs Peak and Lawrence Peak are both recalling how Kong Wu's hands twisted and shoved their tendons angrily sixty million years ago, wrinkling them into a heap like a bird. In it the rabbit and the squirrel and the red fox and the goat, in it the cypress and the spruce and the aspen, and in it the Colorado and the Arkansas were born.Among the chaotic rocks beside the road, the mountain streams are already frozen. Occasionally, from the bottom of an ice hole, one can faintly see the stream water that has not been completely frozen to death rushing down to the warm sea.A man in red wearing a fur hat was standing on a cliff, aiming at a few beer bottles among the rubble. . Turning around a stone hillock, the eyes suddenly brighten up, the vast expanse of whiteness extends the scenery to an extremely far and extremely long distance, and the empty white trembles brush your eyes.In the cold air, for a moment, you hallucinate that your eyelashes are frozen into icicles.Below, 300 feet down, lay a frozen lake, and from bank to bank, for ten miles, the surface of the lake was nothingness ice, ice, and ice was fantasy snow.Nothing else, no swans, no dancers.There is only cool music, because the wind is saying, here is the heart of Qianshan, Wanshan, a piece of ice, soaked in a pot of white jade.That's all, nothing else.Suddenly, Guosong and Shipeng uttered a cry, waved their arms and yelled wildly like Indians in formation, and ran towards the lake together.Snow is still falling.Standing on the shore of the lake, I spread my arms to an impossible length, just under the empty ice sky, for a moment, I don’t know whether to embrace the sky, embrace the lake, embrace the sunset, or embrace something farther and more empty. What, like China.