从内布拉斯加沙山到堪萨斯 Valentine National Wildlife Refuge —— 毕业之旅第五天（上）

From the Nebraska Sandhills Valentine National Wildlife Refuge to Kansas - The 5th Day Morning of the Graduation Travel

 

由于内布拉斯加的森林公园更多就是一个种满树的公园，并没有考虑太多开发和相关的游览路径，所以也决定不在上面花更多时间，而且整个公园都没有什么信号，谁也不知道究竟走在森林里面会不会迷路的。所以早上开始便启程出发。早上参观的地方是Valentine National Wildlife Refuge，属于是我临时加上的一个地点，主要想看一看整个sandhill 究竟是一个怎么回事，上面的保护区究竟又是怎么样。早上离开了内布拉斯加森林公园之后，开始在沙山中游荡。

Since a forest park in Nebraska is more of a park full of trees and not many commercial activities were designed for the development and associated trails to visit,  therefore I decided not to spend more time on it, and since there is little cell phone signal throughout the park, one never knows if one is actually going to get lost walking inside the forest or not. So the next day morning I set off again. The place we visited in the morning was Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, which was a temporary addition to my list of places I wanted to visit, mainly to see what was going on in Sandhill, and what the protected areas above it were really like. After leaving the Nebraska Forest Park in the morning, I started wandering in the sandhills.

 

由于是内陆地区，昼夜温差比较大，早上9点之前，太阳还没有升到很高的时候，外面的温度只有24摄氏度左右。风中感觉微冷，随着太阳的升起，温度开始越来越高。周边似乎被一个长满草的海洋覆盖。从内布拉斯加森林公园出来之后开始往西北方向行驶，一路上，看到各种各样的树，野蛮生长在河边，想必定是内布拉斯加森林的树木，种子得以被各种力量传播，最终落地生根。

Because it is an inland area, the temperature difference between day and night is quite big, before 9:00 in the morning, when the sun has not risen to a very high time, the temperature outside is only about 24 degrees Celsius. It felt slightly chilly in the wind, and as the sun rose, the temperature began to get warmer and warmer. The surrounding area seemed to be covered by an ocean of growing grass. After coming out of the Nebraska Forest Park, we started to drive in a northwestern direction, and along the way, we saw all kinds of trees, growing wildly along the river, thinking that they must be the trees' next generation from the Nebraska forests, the seeds of which were able to be spread by all sorts of forces, and eventually landed on the ground and took root.

 

看着满地的草，牛羊自由的吃草，有种十分安逸祥和的气息，在远离大城市之外的环境里，看着一望无际的草原，内心只会更加平静。

Looking at the grass, sheep, and cattle grazing freely, there is a very restful and peaceful atmosphere, far from the big city outside the environment, looking at the endless grassland, feeling peaceful.

 

这里生长的数，无论树龄多么大，大多粗壮且矮小。再也看不到在新英格兰地区那种随意生长在山林里面，随意都能长到四五十米的树，这里的树大多抱团取暖，单独生长的实属稀罕。

The trees growing here, no matter how old they are, are mostly thick and short. Can no longer see in New England that kind of random growth in the mountains and forests inside, randomly they could grow up to forty or fifty meters of trees, most of the trees here hold together to warm up, growing alone is rare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

这些单独的伶仃的树似乎被大风吹得已经七零八落，很多枝干似乎已经被大风吹断。只剩下少数的还在能够得以继续生长。

These individual trees seem to be scattered and blown by the wind, and many branches seem to have been blown off by the wind. Only a few remained that were able to continue growing.

 

 

 

整个沙山中，其实有很多这样的水塘，实际上在还没被开发之前，这些水塘和水塘之间道路，是原来生活在整个沙山上面的大型动物bison等的迁徙觅食之路，只不过后来整个sandhill被开发了，被宅地法瓜分了之后，这种自然的迁徙道路就不见踪迹。

The sandhill, in fact, there are a lot of such water ponds, before it was developed, these water ponds were connected with "roads".  The large animals such as bison migratory foraging road, but later the whole sandhill was developed, after being divided by the law of the house, this natural migratory road disappeared.

一些房屋在windbreak的保护之下屹立在大平原上面，这些windbreak有很多好处，可以在冬天减少供暖的需要，在夏天遮荫避暑，减少风力对房屋的影响……

Some houses stand on the Great Plains under the protection of windbreaks, which have many benefits, reducing the need for heating in the winter, providing shade in the summer, and reducing the impact of wind on the houses. ...

 

 

路边的草，其实可以看到很多这些草，如果在这种相对比较陡的土坡上面，其实还是能够看到底下裸露的沙丘，也就是说他们并非得到很好的覆盖，特别是在这种有比较有坡度的土坡上面。上面主要有两种草在在上面生长，一种是tallgrass，一种是shortgrass。这两种草其实是在不同的季节上面生长的，他们的优势互补，某种情况下是一种竞争关系，但是某种情况下又是互助的关系，要是土坡都没了，就没有这两种草的故事了。

The roadside grasses you can see. A lot of these grasses, if in this relatively steep slope above the soil, you can still see the bottom of the bare dunes, that is to say, they are not well covered, especially in this kind of sloping slope above the soil. There are two kinds of grasses growing on it, one is tallgrass, and one is shortgrass, these two kinds of grasses grow in different seasons, and their advantages complement each other, in some cases, it is like a kind of competition for the nature resources, but in some cases, it is a mutually supportive relationship, if the soil slope is gone, there is no story of these two kinds of grasses.

 

一高一低参差不齐的土坡。

The hill with grass.

 

整个内布拉斯加sandhill内部的很多保护区和公园，基本上属于一个没有怎么被开发的地带，上面没有多少商业活动，甚至想找个便利店都难。人烟稀少得连服务业都无法生存。

Most of the preserves and parks throughout the interior of Nebraska's sandhill are basically part of a strip of land that hasn't been developed much, and there's not a lot of commercial activity on it, and it's hard to even think about finding a convenience store or vending machine. It's so sparsely populated that even the service industry can't survive.

 

https://www.fws.gov/refuge/valentine

 

整个保护区就是这么神奇地在马路中间设立，被这条大马路从中间切开，似乎这条路也是这个保护区的，由于也找不到入口，所以只按照导航到其东边的保护区参观了一圈。

The whole reserve is just so magically set up in the middle of the road, cut down the middle by this big road that seems to be owned by this reserve as well, and since I couldn't find the entrance either, I just followed the navigation and visited the reserve to its east.

 

 

在这个湖边停下，实际上这个服务中心也是相当简陋，上面有一些宣传册可以拿来参考。

Stopped by this lake, this service center is also quite simple, there are some brochures on it that you can use for reference.

 

而停留一下也并没有发现什么内容，所以只好自己去探索这个大草原。

And a stop didn't reveal much of anything, so had to explore this savannah on my own.

 

 

 

 

沿着空无一人的路，开始独自探索。

Along the empty road, started to explore alone.

 

整个草原里，草开始越来越高，沿着这条路行驶，直到后来，发现这些草已经及腰高， 也就想起了以前初中语文老师所描述的，内蒙古的草比人还要高。直到发现车似乎一直在被草所拖底，只好放弃开车在这个大草原中继续探索。这边的车基本上都是皮卡，底盘较高，全时四驱，一时半时陷车了也能爬出来。家用车也就不要作死，不然在这个地方拖车将会很麻烦。

The entire grassland, grass began to get higher and higher, along the road driving, until later, found that the grass was waist-high, but also recalled what my previous junior high school teacher described, the grass in Inner Mongolia was as higher than a person in summer. I realized that the car seemed to have been dragged down by the grass, and I had to give up driving in this prairie to continue to explore. The vehicles able to survive here are basically trucks, chassis higher, full-time four-wheel drive, half a time trapped in the car can also climb out. The family car should not be killed, or in this place trailer will be very troublesome.

 

所有这些像沙丘一样的土地，看起来就像是长满草的沙漠，实际上在很久以前，这里就是流动的沙漠，只不过后来有了足够的降水，以及适宜的气候环境，这些沙丘得以被草固定下来。感兴趣的同学可以去看一下以下两篇论问，都对草原上的气候变化和沙丘的历史流动性变化有所介绍。这些沙丘能不能固定不动，以后很难说，在厄尔尼诺现象和拉尼娜现象的影响下，中部大平原的干旱情况实际上和太阳黑子的活动也有关，总之平均20年左右会有一次比较大的干旱，这样的干旱也就带来了潜在的旱灾。

All these dune-like lands look like deserts full of grass, but in fact, a long time ago, this place was a flowing desert, later there was enough precipitation, as well as suitable climatic conditions, and these dunes were able to be grown and fixed by grass. If you are interested, you can read the following two essays, both of which describe climate change in the grasslands and the historical mobility of the sand dunes. It is hard to say whether or not these dunes can be immobilized in the future. Under the influence of El Niño and La Niña, the drought conditions in the Central Great Plains are actually related to sunspot activity as well, in any case, on average, there will be a relatively large drought once every 20 years or so, and such droughts bring with them potential droughts as well.

 

在整个内布拉斯加的沙丘下面，实际上储存着大量的地下水，和现在各位同学对沙漠的印象可能不一样。也就可以推测在很久以前，可能楼兰啊什么这些西域等地的的沙漠地区，可能以前就是像内布拉斯加这样的草原。因为砂质土壤，雨水基本上下下来就开始下渗了，这里实际上也是整个美国Ogallala Aquifer拥有最多地下水资源的地方之一。因为这里一直没有什么农业活动，不会用到center pivot irrigation，所以这里的地下水含量，常年实际上是在不断的增长，而其他地区因为大量使用地下水作为灌溉，有些地区的地下水开始逐渐枯竭。

Underneath the sand dunes throughout Nebraska, there is actually a large number of underground books stored, which may not be the same as your impression of the sandhill today. It can also be hypothesized that a long time ago, perhaps the desert areas of Loulan and whatnot and other places in the west, may have been grasslands like Nebraska. Because of the sandy soil, the rain basically came down and started to seep down, and this is actually one of the places in the entire U.S. where the Ogallala Aquifer has one of the largest groundwater resources. Because there hasn't been much agricultural activity here that would use center pivot irrigation, the groundwater content here is actually growing year-round, while other areas are starting to run out of groundwater in some areas because of the heavy use of groundwater for irrigation.

 

无人机视觉下，地上的森林似乎就是一团团小苔藓（MOSS）。

Looking from the bird's view, the forest above ground appears to be a mass of tiny moss (MOSS).

 

层层叠叠的沙丘，伴随着远处局部人工建造的防护林windbreak。这些防护林看起来是如此的催弱和不堪一击，甚至不成系统。

Layers and layers of sand dunes are accompanied by windbreaks of localized, man-made forests in the distance, which appear to be so weak and fragile that they are not even systematic.

 

 

当你在上帝视觉往下看的时候，就能够感受到上面不同微地形带来的微小干湿变化程度所产生的植物差异。

When you look down in God's eye view, you can feel the difference in the plants from the tiny dry and wet variations in the micro-topography above.

 

 

这些枯萎死掉了的数目，似乎在诉说西南风太过于干旱炎热，直到自己在长时间的西南风吹拂下，已经无法承受，最后鞠躬尽瘁死而后已。

These withered and died in numbers to complain that the southwest winds were too dry and hot until they could no longer withstand the prolonged southwesterly winds, and finally bowed out and died.

 

各种各样的水塘，实际上极大的增加了当地的生物多样性，这是大自然鬼斧神工的设计，有意无意之间营造出这种变化多样的环境。

The various water ponds actually greatly increase the local biodiversity, which is the design of nature's ingenious work, intentionally or unintentionally to create this kind of changing and diverse environment.

 

 

 

 

观察这些树的生与死，其实就可以推断出应该在设计上尽可能减弱西南风的影响，比如尽可能在西南边怼一些干草堆，遮挡一些风，好让这些树木能够存活。

Observing the life and death of these trees, I think some designs can actually deduce the impact. If you could control the wind, the southwest wind should be minimized, such as disliking some haystacks in the southwest as much as possible to shield them from the wind, so that these trees can survive.

 

 

一堆堆酷枯死的树，有时候也未必完全是因为西南风的影响，这一团有可能是因为整个低洼的场地，降雨不够所导致的。

A bunch of cool dead trees, sometimes may not be entirely because of the impact of the southwest wind, this mess may be due to the entire low-lying site, and not enough rainfall caused.

 

 

个人认为整个保护区，应该根据市场需要，局部分时段适应开始部分骑马等的活动，

Personally, I think the whole reserve should be adapted to market needs, the Bureau part of the time start some of the activities such as horseback riding.

 

如果有足够好的网络信号环境，我相信在这里办公将会是一个不错的选择。

If there is a good enough network signal, I believe that the office here working remotely will be a good choice.

 

 

在这个空无一人也没有什么活动可以进行refugee里面停留了一会儿，温度开始重新升到30摄氏度。夏至中午的炎热开始使得这里不宜久留。不然在这种环境优美的空旷地方阅读一天书， 将会是十分舒适的体验。因还有路程要探索，只好继续前进，短暂停留后离开这个保护区。

After some time in this emptiness refugee, the temperature began to rise again to 30 degrees Celsius. The heat of the summer solstice is starting to make this not a good place to stay. Otherwise, it would be a very comfortable experience to spend the day reading a book in this beautiful open space. There was still some distance to be explored, so we had to move on, stopping briefly to leave the reserve.

 

 

 

漫山遍野的牛羊，广袤无边的草原，空无一人的公路，屹立不倒的电线杆……

Cattle and sheep on the mountains, vast grasslands, empty highways, standing poles ...

 

在这个地方生存，长时间下来不知道究竟需要承受多少孤独。

Surviving in this place for an extended time I wonder just how much loneliness one has to endure.

 

一路上会看到这里新的路和旧的路，似乎完全互不干地放在了一起，以前的路似乎在讲述过去的故事。

Along the way will see here the new road and the old road, seem to be completely mutually uninteresting put together, the former road seems to tell the story of the past.

 

 

路上的一段不知名的休息观光风景点，或许成为你在枯燥的公路上停留以下驻足的地方。

An unknown rest and sightseeing spot on the road may become a place for you to stop on the boring highway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

短暂停留之后继续往南边前进。

After a short rest, we continue to the south.

 

一路上，沙丘开始逐渐变少，土地开始重新变成平地，也就多了越来越多的农业活动。

Along the way, the sand dunes become less and less, and the land starts to become flat again, which leads to more and more agricultural activities.

 

看着遍地牛羊，不禁想起：

Looking at the cows and sheep all over the place, I couldn't help but think of the poem

 

大部分牛和羊实际上都不是很喜欢的太过陡峭的土坡的，对比bison来说，bison能够更轻而易举地翻山越岭，所以理论上整个sandhill的地形或许更加适合饲养bison，生态效益上面肯定会优于cattle，但是经济收益上面又未必。

Most of the cattle and sheep do actually not very like too steep soil slopes, compared to bison, bison can more easily over the mountains, so the theory of the entire sandhill terrain may be more suitable for raising bison, ecological benefits will certainly be better than the battle, but the economic benefits may not be this powerful or even weak.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

中午，到达North Plate，在上面找了家叫The Cedar Room的餐厅吃饭，前一天在内布拉斯加森林公园里面的饥饿终于在这里饱餐一顿。食物很是新鲜。

At noon, we arrived at North Plate and ate at The Cedar Room, where we finally had a full meal after the previous day's hunger in the Nebraska Forest Park. The food was fresh.

 

下午，沿着kansas的方向一路前进。

In the afternoon, we went all the way along Kansas.

 

一望无际的金黄金黄的麦田。

A vast expanse of golden, golden wheat fields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

有灌溉的农田，大部分都是绿色的作物，没有灌溉的农田，大部分也就只能种植需水量较少的作物。在炎热的中部，这已经成为共识。

Most of the irrigated farmland is green with crops, and most of the unirrigated farmland is limited to crops that require less water. In the heat of the center, this has become the consensus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

路上的电线杆，像是一个个十字架，守护着整条公路。

Power poles on the road, like crosses, guard the entire highway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

下午，到达堪萨斯州。

In the afternoon, we arrived in Kansas.