老外在中国：在黑暗中前行，寻得信心之光

When the mountain trail you thought would take you downhill suddenly ends in a great snarl of thorny bushes, and it’s nearly dusk, you know there’s trouble ahead.
当你本想沿着山间小路下山时，突然发现眼前却是一片荆棘丛生、灌木缠绕的景象，而此时薄暮冥冥，你知道，麻烦来了。

That’s the situation my husband Jun and I faced years ago when we decided to summit the mountain at the center of his rural village in Zhejiang. And I never imagined that, in getting lost there, I would find something far more important.
我的公公婆婆住在浙江的一个农村，村子正中有一座山，几年前，当我们决心要攀上山顶时就遇到这种状况。但让我没想到的是，这次迷路让我找到了更为重要的东西。

While we had always wanted to reach the top, which drove us to hike there in the afternoon, we hadn’t planned for such a precarious descent. But our experience hiking around the village and its hidden network of unofficial trails should have prepared us for this possibility. How many times had we followed a well-trodden dirt path, only to have it stop in a thicket of weedy grass or a maze of bamboo? In fact, the very trail we used to climb the mountain had also disappeared into the woods, forcing us to improvise a way through a dense cluster of bushes and trees.
登顶的想法萦绕心头已久，于是我们决定当天下午便开始攀登，却没有料到下山的路这么危险。不过，鉴于此前在村周围远足的经历，以及这里未经开垦的隐蔽的山间小道，我们应该提前预料到这个状况。有多少次我们沿着一条常有人来往的泥泞小路前进，最后却驻足在丛丛杂草或是茂林深篁之中？其实，我们上山的这条小路刚进入山林也消失不见了，所以我们只得勉强从茂密的灌木树丛开辟出一条小道来。

However, the summit appeared deceptively neat, with a clearing and what seemed to be a far easier trail winding down the other slope of the mountain. We thought it would be a fast, straightforward trip back, until the trail petered out and left us stranded in the remnants of abandoned fields swallowed up by layers of weeds and crawling thorns, stretching down the mountain as far as we could see.
不过，山顶看起来很平坦，而且山的另一边有条蜿蜒的下山小路清晰可见，貌似比上山小道更好走。我们以为，沿着这条路下山又快又直截了当。但是这条小路却慢慢消失了，我们被困在一片杂草丛生、荆棘遍布的荒地之中，顺山而下，一直延伸到我们的视线尽头。

If we wanted to make it back home, we would have to blaze our own way out of there, in the dark.
我们想顺利回家就得在夜色中开辟出一条道来。

As a lifelong hiking enthusiast, I had logged hundreds of miles on trails in parks across the US, my home country, but never at night. And yet there we were, trapped on the side of a mountain in near darkness with no established trail at all.
作为一名毕生的徒步爱好者，我曾在我的祖国——美国的公园小路上行走了数百英里，但从未在夜里走过。然而现在我们竟然被困在了山上，天色几乎一片黑暗，而且四周没有一条经过开垦的山路！

I felt scared, beyond just the fact that walking ahead meant facing a prickly field of thorns. I worried we might take the wrong step and tumble down, or fall into something even worse than those thorns, since we couldn’t see the ground. How could we possibly move forward?
我感到害怕，不仅是因为向前行进意味着要面对一片荆棘丛生的山地。我们看不清地面，所以我担心会不会走错一步路而摔倒在地，遇到比荆棘更可怕的东西。我们该怎么往前走呢？

“Just take one step at a time,” my husband told me. “Don’t worry.” It was his way of encouraging me to have faith.
“一次只走一步。”我的丈夫对我说：“别担心。”他就是这么鼓励我获得信心的。

Faith is something I’ve struggled with in life, and being on that mountain was a test for me. It took all of my resolve to lift my foot up and place it among those thorns. But it turned out OK. And so did the next move, and the one after that. With each small step of progress, I found myself gradually gaining confidence -- in our ability to make it home, and in ourselves.
生活中，我是一个缺乏信心的人，在山上发生的这件事是对我信心的一个考验。我下了巨大的决心才抬起脚向荆棘丛中迈去，踩上去后却发现是安全的，下一步、再下一步也是。每前行一小步，我的信心都在逐渐增加——我对我们成功回家的能力有信心，也对我们自己有信心。

Sometimes, it’s incredible how, in the midst of something fearful, we can still find the strength within ourselves to move on and to believe, even if it’s just through one tiny action at a time.
有时候，我们在恐惧之中依旧能寻得隐藏在内心的力量，去相信，去前进，即便一次只是前行一小步而已，这是多么不可思议啊。

When we eventually spied the soft white glow of windows from a house beside the road, announcing our return to civilization, waves of relief washed over me. While I told my husband we were fortunate, I also recognized it wasn’t luck that led us out of the darkness. We did it. And knowing that gave me a little more faith.
当我们终于看到从路边房屋的窗户透出来的柔和白光时，我知道我们找到了回去的路，我感到如释重负。我跟丈夫说，我们很幸运，但我也知道带领我们走出黑暗的不是幸运。我们做到了。为此我又多了一份信心。

翻译：陈美君（实习）
编审：董静 丹妮
音频编辑：焦洁
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About the author & broadcaster

Jocelyn Eikenburg is a copy editor for China Daily. She has written extensively about cross-cultural topics, including for The Wall Street Journal and The Huffington Post. A US native, she has called China home for over nine years and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.