密歇根新闻广播 外国记者的新回忆录

 

After working as a correspondent for Time magazine in Europe and South America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Charles Eisendrath came to Ann Arbor¹.

For 30 years, he directed the University of Michigan's Knight-Wallace Fellowships, a program for journalists.

But his love of Michigan began further north.

Eisendrath's new memoir², Downstream from Here, is a collection of essays about wars and fishing, current politics and ancient Greek philosophy, all written at Overlook Farm, his summer home in East Jordan near Charlevoix. His parents bought the property in the 1940s.

In this excerpt³, Eisendrath recalls a fishing trip when he was 9 years old. He and his dad set out from his grandparents' nearby home on Lake Michigan.

My father somehow produced a twelve-foot, green plywood rowboat with a five-horsepower outboard.

Not that Dad was a boater.

He neither knew nor cared to know anything about the outdoor life that so powerfully called me from every magazine and boy's adventure book.

The idea was for my father and me to set out alone from the shore in front of my grandparents' beach “cottage” and fish all the way to Overlook Farm, fifteen miles and two lakes away.

Huge, albeit⁴ unconscious symbolism at work here: to be departing from in-laws my father detested⁵, with a son to whom he had only recently taken interest and an activity the son knew more about than he did.

As we planned the day at breakfast, the Big Lake was calm. It almost always is at that hour, usually signifying nothing about what might follow.

By the time we flipped⁶ the boat over on the sand, there was considerable surf. As Dad pushed off, each wave broke, first over me, then the stern, then heaving my father back on the stones.

I flailed⁷ away at the oars⁸. The propeller⁹ sounded like a hammer on steel as it bashed into rocks. Somehow, we got beyond the first line of breakers.

Somehow, we got the engine started, with him holding the boat steady in chest-deep water.

Problem: He was out of the boat, which did not have gears. He hung from the bow, one leg over a gunwale. My instructions were unspecific, “Keep going.”

We made it to the Charlevoix channel light where waves from the rear pushed us any way they wanted, sometimes helplessly toward the cement breakwater.

Then we were through Round Lake, the town's natural harbor, and out into the main body of Lake Charlevoix. My father, visibly relieved, said, “Aren't we supposed to be fishing?”

When the steelhead hit?—?I still remember it?—?I thought at first that something terrible had happened to the rod, the reel, boat, maybe the world.

As steelhead do, this one jumped repeatedly, took line, dove. I don't remember anything about my father's reaction except that he seemed to have no concept that anything unusual was happening. To him, the consummate¹⁰ non-angler, when you went fishing, you caught a fish. When you'd caught it, you pulled up your line and did something else.

That's what we did.

Me? Thrilled.

Him? I don't know about him.

That was the summer he'd come into the living room where I was dreaming over a copy of The Fisherman's Encyclopedia¹¹.

I was nine.

Charles, he said, let's become acquainted.

He must have thought a boat might float a new relationship.

Excerpt from "Downstream from Here: A Big Life in a Small Place" by Charles Eisendrath. Copyright 2019. Republished by permission of the author.

1 arbor   

n.凉亭；树木

参考例句：

• They sat in the arbor and chatted over tea.他们坐在凉亭里，边喝茶边聊天。
• You may have heard of Arbor Day at school.你可能在学校里听过植树节。

2 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

3 excerpt   

n.摘录，选录，节录

参考例句：

• This is an excerpt from a novel.这是一部小说的摘录。
• Can you excerpt something from the newspaper? 你能从报纸上选录些东西吗？

4 albeit   

conj.即使；纵使；虽然

参考例句：

• Albeit fictional,she seemed to have resolved the problem.虽然是虚构的，但是在她看来好象是解决了问题。
• Albeit he has failed twice,he is not discouraged.虽然失败了两次，但他并没有气馁。

5 detested   

v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They detested each other on sight. 他们互相看着就不顺眼。
• The freethinker hated the formalist; the lover of liberty detested the disciplinarian. 自由思想者总是不喜欢拘泥形式者，爱好自由者总是憎恶清规戒律者。 来自辞典例句

6 flipped   

轻弹( flip的过去式和过去分词 )； 按（开关）； 快速翻转； 急挥

参考例句：

• The plane flipped and crashed. 飞机猛地翻转，撞毁了。
• The carter flipped at the horse with his whip. 赶大车的人扬鞭朝着马轻轻地抽打。

7 flailed   

v.鞭打( flail的过去式和过去分词 )；用连枷脱粒；（臂或腿）无法控制地乱动；扫雷坦克

参考例句：

• The boys flailed around on the floor. 男孩子们在地板上任意地动来动去。
• The prisoner's limbs flailed violently because of the pain. 那囚犯因为疼痛，四肢剧烈地抖动着。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 oars   

n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• He pulled as hard as he could on the oars. 他拼命地划桨。
• The sailors are bending to the oars. 水手们在拼命地划桨。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 propeller   

n.螺旋桨，推进器

参考例句：

• The propeller started to spin around.螺旋桨开始飞快地旋转起来。
• A rope jammed the boat's propeller.一根绳子卡住了船的螺旋桨。

10 consummate   

adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle

参考例句：

• The restored jade burial suit fully reveals the consummate skill of the labouring people of ancient China.复原后的金缕玉衣充分显示出中国古代劳动人民的精湛工艺。
• The actor's acting is consummate and he is loved by the audience.这位演员技艺精湛，深受观众喜爱。

11 encyclopedia   

n.百科全书

参考例句：

• The encyclopedia fell to the floor with a thud.那本百科全书砰的一声掉到地上。
• Geoff is a walking encyclopedia.He knows about everything.杰夫是个活百科全书，他什么都懂。