三年走過10000英里的奇女子
A hundred years ago, when Robert Falcon Scott set out for Antarctica on his Terra Nova expedition, his two primary goals were scientific discovery and reaching the geographic South Pole. Arguably, though, Scott was really chasing what contemporary observers call a sufferfest. He set himself up for trouble: Scott brought Manchurian and Siberian ponies that quickly fell through the snow and ice; he planned, in part, for his crew to “man-haul,” meaning that the men would pull sleds full of gear, instead of relying on dogs. Even when Scott’s men faltered, they continued collecting specimens, including rocks. The expedition ended terribly; everybody who made the push to the pole died. Miserable, starving and frostbitten, one of Scott’s last four men killed himself by walking into a blizzard without even bothering to put on his boots.
100年前(1912年)，英國極地探險家羅伯特·法爾肯·斯科特啓程前往南極洲，開始進行特拉諾瓦遠征(Terra Nova，意爲“新陸地”) 。斯科特此行的主要目的有兩個：科學發現；抵達地理學上的南極點。然而我們可以說，斯科特真正追求的，是當代觀察家所稱的“苦難之旅”。斯科特總是自找苦吃：他購買的滿洲矮種馬和西伯利亞矮種馬在冰雪中迅速倒地；他沒有采用“狗拉雪橇”，而是採用“人拉雪橇”，也就是讓探險隊員用人力拉動滿載各種設備的雪橇。即使是在冰雪中舉步維艱的時候，斯科特探險隊依舊在採集岩石等標本。此次遠征的結局非常悲慘：四名向南極點發起衝鋒的探險隊員全部葬身冰原。飽受飢餓、凍傷折磨的勞倫斯·奧茨（四名隊員之一）甚至連靴子都沒穿就步入暴風雪中，淒涼地結束了自己的生命。
In the taxonomy of travelers, the word “explorer” suggests a morally superior pioneer, a man or woman who braves the battle against nature to discover new terrain, expanding our species’ understanding of the world. “Adventurer,” by contrast, implies a self-indulgent adrenaline junkie, who scares loved ones by courting puerile risk. The former, obviously, is the far better title, but it’s tough to claim these days. The world is Google-mapped. Reaching the actual virgin territory of space or the deep ocean requires resources that few possess. In short, the noble fig leaf of terra incognita has fallen away and laid bare the peripatetic, outsize bravado of Scott’s kindred spirits. The resulting itineraries are pretty strange. We now have guys like Felix Baumgartner sky-diving from a balloon-borne capsule at 128,100 feet.
在旅行者的分類學中,“探險家”指的是道德高尚的先驅者，他或她爲了發現新的地域，勇於向大自然發起挑戰，從而拓展了人類對世界的認識。相反，“冒險家”指的是自我放縱的腎上腺素迷。他們追求幼稚的冒險，讓心愛的人擔驚受怕。顯然，前者的含義遠遠好於後者。但時至今日，要獲得“探險家”的頭銜非常艱難。世界各地都爲谷歌地圖所覆蓋，要抵達外太空或大洋深處真正的處女地又需要大量的資源，大多數人根本不會有。簡而言之，“未知領域”凸顯了斯科特式的環遊大冒險，但這塊華美的遮羞布已經不復存在。旅行路線因而變得非常奇怪。現在，我們有菲利克斯·保加拿這樣的冒險家，這名跳傘好手從氣球懸吊的太空艙裏一躍而下，征服了128100英尺的高度。Baumgartner falls squarely — and for more than four minutes, breaking the speed of sound — into the adventurer camp. But then there’s Sarah Marquis, who perhaps should be seen as an explorer like Scott, born in the wrong age. She is 42 and Swiss, and has spent three of the past four years walking about 10,000 miles by herself, from Siberia through the Gobi Desert, China, Laos and Thailand, then taking a cargo boat to Brisbane, Australia, and walking across that continent. Along the way, like Scott, she has starved, she has frozen, she has (wo)man-hauled. She has pushed herself at great physical cost to places she wanted to love but ended up feeling, as Scott wrote of the South Pole in his journal: “Great God! This is an awful place.” Despite planning a ludicrous trip, and dying on it, Scott became beloved and, somewhat improbably, hugely respected. Marquis, meanwhile, can be confounding. “You tell people what you’re doing, and they say, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Marquis told me. “It’s never: ‘Cool project, Sarah! Go for it.’ ” Perhaps this is because the territory Marquis explores is really internal — the nature of fear, the limits of stamina and self-reliance and the meaning of traveling in nature as a female human animal, alone.
歷時四分多鐘，保加拿成功完成了此次超音速跳傘，徑直跳入了冒險家的陣營。不過,這裏還有一位莎拉·馬奎斯。她或許應該被視爲斯科特式的探險家，但卻生不逢時。在過去的四年中，這位現年42歲的瑞士女人用時三年，獨自走完了10000英里的征程：從西伯利亞出發，穿越戈壁大沙漠、中國、老撾、泰國；然後乘坐貨輪前往澳大利亞的布里斯班，進而穿越澳洲。一路上，她也和斯科特一樣，經歷了飢餓、冰凍、“人拉雪橇”。馬奎斯精疲力竭地抵達目的地後，才發覺這些自己本想用心去愛的地方原來與斯科特探險日記中的南極點如出一轍：“天哪！這地方糟糕透了！”雖然斯科特導演了一次非常荒唐的南極探險，最終還爲此付出了生命，但他還是因此備受愛戴（多少有些難以置信）。不過，馬奎斯可能會讓人感到驚詫。“你告訴別人你在做什麼之後，別人會說‘你瘋了’”馬奎斯對我說道：“他們從來不會說‘好酷的計劃，莎拉！試試看吧！’”也許這是因爲馬奎斯是在探索真正的內在世界 – 畏懼的天性、毅力和自力更生的極限、一個人類女人獨自在大自然中旅行的含義。
Meeting Marquis is strange if you’ve only seen her trip photos. In those, she is filthy, her hair is a rat’s nest and her eyes are introspective, beseeching and very alert. In person, she’s beautiful and charming; she always has a smile for waiters and cabdrivers, and her bangs are so well cut that they make her seem French. (Marquis’s hairdresser squashed her idea of shaving her head for her recent trek, saying, “After all the work we’ve done?!”)
如果你只看過馬奎斯的旅行照片，你和她見面的時候就會覺得很陌生。旅行照片裏的馬奎斯非常邋遢，頭髮如鼠窩一般糟亂，目光內省、懇切而又非常機警。但實際上馬奎斯是一個美麗迷人的女子。她總是微笑面對服務生和出租車司機，一頭劉海剪得非常齊整，看上去像法國人。（馬奎斯最近想把頭髮剃掉方便探險，但美髮師堅決否決了這一提議“我們把頭髮做的這麼漂亮，你難道要全剪掉？！”）Marquis grew up in Montsevelier, a village of 500 people in the Jura Mountains, in what Marquis describes as “the northern part of Switzerland — it’s not the nice part.” Her father, who worked as an engineer, paid Marquis one franc for every 100 slugs she picked out of the family garden. She befriended the family ewe, Moumou, and trained the pet rabbit to come when called. She liked people less. “My mom had nine sisters, and my dad had eight sisters and brothers, and those aunts and uncles all had three or four kids, so it was a big, screaming family, and for me it was a nightmare,” Marquis told me when I met her last winter in Washington. At age 8 she ran into the woods with her dog and spent the night in a cave. Marquis’s mother called the police, but when Marquis returned, her mother didn’t scold. Fighting Marquis’s wanderlust was hopeless.
馬奎斯在侏羅山裏、人口500的芒特塞韋利耶村長大。她稱此地爲“瑞士北部 – 不是好看的那部分。”馬奎斯在家庭花園裏每捉到100只蛞蝓，就可以向工程師父親換取1瑞士法郎。她把家養的母羊沫沫當作朋友對待，訓練寵物兔聽到號令後立刻趕來，但她不怎麼喜歡人。“我媽有九姐妹，我爸有八個兄弟姐妹。這些叔叔伯伯姑姑姨姨每人又有三到四個孩子。在這個龐大的家庭裏，尖叫之聲不絕於耳。這個家就是我的噩夢”去年冬天我們在華盛頓見面時馬奎斯如是說。8歲那年，馬奎斯牽着狗跑進森林，在洞穴裏過了一夜。母親焦急地報了警，但馬奎斯回家後，她並沒予以訓斥，因爲想要改變馬奎斯的旅行癖是根本不可能的。When she was 16, Marquis answered a classified ad for a train company that promised free travel. She loved the idea of seeing Paris and Milan, but once Marquis started work, her colleagues, almost all of whom were older men, harassed her relentlessly. On the first day one man claimed he could smell that Marquis had her period. The experience was a boot camp — punishing but character-strengthening. “I learned how to build myself,” she said. “I built the tough skin I needed for later on. I learned how men worked.”
16歲那年，馬奎斯回覆了一家承諾提供免費旅遊的鐵路公司的分類廣告。她很想親眼感受巴黎和米蘭，但在工作伊始就遭到了同事們(基本上是老男人)持續不斷的騷擾。工作第一天，一個男人宣稱他能嗅出馬奎斯來了例假。這段如新兵訓練營般的工作經歷讓馬奎斯飽嘗艱辛，但也錘鍊了她的性格。“我學會了該如何讓自己變得堅強，”馬奎斯說道：“我鍛煉出了日後所需的一身硬骨。我學會了男人的工作方式。”Marquis’s desire to travel began to coalesce around the question of whether she could survive by herself in nature. First, she decided to ride a horse across Turkey. On that trip, she ate apricots off trees and slept with her head on her saddle. Muslim women bathed her in warm goat’s milk. But after that, Marquis’s itineraries veered away from romance and pleasure into solitude and suffering. In her early 20s she flew to New Zealand and set out on a four-day backpacking trip with some noodles, a huge radio and three or four books — “everything except what I needed.” The outing, by typical standards, was a fiasco. Day 1 it poured; Marquis didn’t know how to set up her tent, and she was freezing and bored because, she now said wryly, “at night there was nothing to do.” But near the end of the trip she had a sort-of epiphany. “Something happened,” she said. (Articulating her reasons for pursuing her travels is not one of Marquis’s strengths.) “Over the years I’ve had this feeling again and again.” Chasing that inexplicable sensation is why she walks.
爲了確定自己能否在大自然中獨自求生，馬奎斯漸漸產生了旅行的渴望。剛開始，她決定騎馬穿越土耳其。在這段旅途中，她吃着樹上掉下的杏子，枕着馬鞍入眠。穆斯林婦女用溫熱的山羊奶爲她洗浴。但此後，馬奎斯的旅行漸漸與浪漫與歡樂無緣，等待她的是孤獨與痛苦。二十來歲的時候，馬奎斯飛往新西蘭，開始進行爲期四天的揹包旅行。她帶了些麪條、一臺大型收音機、三四本書 – “什麼都帶了，就是沒帶自己需要的東西。”根據正常標準判斷，馬奎斯此行可謂慘敗。第一天大雨傾盆；馬奎斯不知該如何支起帳篷。身上冰涼，心中無聊。“晚上根本無事可做，”她現在苦笑着說道。然而在此次遠足即將結束的時候，馬奎斯突然明白了什麼。“發生了一些事情，”她說道。（闡明旅行的原因並非馬奎斯的強項。）“這些年來，這種感覺一次又一次地涌上我的心頭。”她堅持旅行，就是爲了追求那樣一種難以名狀的感覺。Marquis spent the winter after that trip earning money by bartending in Verbier, a fancy off-piste ski resort in the Alps. The next summer she returned to New Zealand. This time she walked into the South Island’s Kahurangi National Park without food to see if she could survive for 30 days. That trip, too, was a trial. Marquis failed at spearfishing, consumed only mussels and lost 20 pounds. But she not only recaptured that inchoate feeling she craved; she also glimpsed the savageness of her desire. “That was the first time I actually got in touch with the wild,” Marquis said. “You know when you’re really, really hungry? You have to teach yourself that food is not a big issue. You just need sleep and sweet water.”
遠足結束後，馬奎斯在阿爾卑斯山的越野滑雪勝地韋爾比耶當酒吧招待賺取金錢，度過了一個冬天。第二年夏天她重回新西蘭，不帶食物就走進了南島卡胡朗吉國家公園，想知道自己能否在野外生存30天。但此次旅行依舊是場痛苦的試練。由於不會用魚叉捕魚，馬奎斯不得不以貽貝爲食，瘦了整整20磅。然而，她不但找回了夢寐以求的旅行初心，而且得以一見心中的野性。“這是我第一次真正接觸野外，”馬奎斯說道。“你知道你什麼時候會真正感到飢餓。你必須教會自己，食物並不是大問題。你只需要睡眠和甜水。”Marquis returned to Switzerland and embraced the cycle — work for money, then leave on some extreme challenge she devised for herself. She canoed through Canada’s Algonquin park without knowing how to portage; she was attacked by beavers camping near water in Patagonia; she hiked the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail. She remained captivated by what she describes as “this wild call from inside me” and decided to walk 8,700 miles around Australia.
馬奎斯回到瑞士，繼續工作–旅行的循環 – 工作掙錢，然後奔向自己爲自己設計的極限挑戰。她不知道如何水陸聯運，卻划着獨木舟穿越了加拿大阿岡昆公園；她在巴塔哥尼亞的水域附近宿營時遭到了河狸的攻擊；她走完了全長2650英里的太平洋山脊步道。馬奎斯依舊沉醉於她所稱的“內心深處的野性呼喚”，並決定環遊澳大利亞，走完全長8700英里的征程。For that trip, Marquis lined up her first sponsor, the North Face. She doesn’t think she impressed the company by her pitch. She believes it gave her a few backpacks, a couple of tents and some clothes because, she said, “when I told them what I was going to do, they thought, We can’t let that little thing go out without gear.” To supplement the inadequate supply of noodles she could carry, Marquis brought a slingshot, a blow gun, some wire to make snares and a net for catching insects. In the warm months, Marquis ate goannas, geckos and bearded dragons. In the cold months, when the reptiles hid, she subsisted on an Aboriginal standby, witchetty grubs — white, caterpillar-size moth larvae that live in the roots of Mulga trees. (Raw, Marquis said, they taste like unsweetened condensed milk; seared in hot sand, they crisp up nicely.) Throughout, Marquis tried to minimize human contact. She hid her femininity with loose clothes, big sunglasses, hair piled up in a hat. When water was scarce, she collected condensation, either by digging a deep hole and lining the cool bottom with plastic or by tying a tarp around a bush. If those techniques didn’t yield enough liquid — and they rarely did — she drank snake blood. At night Marquis slept close to the trunks of trees, touching the bark in a way that she describes as “almost carnal.” She fell in love with a particular twisted and wind-bent Western myall tree on Australia’s Nullarbor Plain.
爲環遊澳洲，馬奎斯開始和自己的第一位贊助商 – 樂斯菲斯(the North Face)接觸。她認爲自己的遊說並沒有用給這家公司留下深刻印象，但她還是相信公司會提供一些揹包、幾頂帳篷、若干衣服，因爲“當我對他們說我準備幹什麼的時候，他們想，我們不能什麼設備都不帶就動身。”由於無法攜帶足量的麪條補給，馬奎斯還攜帶了一把彈弓、一把吹槍、幾條用以製作陷阱、羅網捕捉昆蟲的金屬線。在這溫暖的幾個月裏，馬奎斯以澳洲巨蜥、壁虎、鬆獅蜥爲食。在寒冷的幾個月裏，由於爬行動物都躲了起來，她只能靠澳洲土著的應急食品 – 在澳大利亞圍籬樹根部生活的木蠹蛾幼蟲維生。（她說這種蟲子生吃的味道有點像不加糖的煉乳，如果在滾熱的沙子上烤過之後這些蟲子就會變得酥脆可口。）自始自終，馬奎斯都儘量減少與人類的聯繫。她穿上寬鬆的衣服，戴上大型太陽鏡，再把頭髮盤進帽子裏，從而將自己的女性氣質隱藏起來。如果飲水不足，馬奎斯就挖個深洞，在底部鋪上塑料薄膜或把防水布系在灌木上收集凝結水。萬一這些技巧也無法獲得足夠的飲水，她就飲用蛇血。晚上睡覺的時候馬奎斯就貼着樹幹，用自己稱之爲“近乎於情慾”的方式摩挲樹皮。她愛上了一棵澳大利亞納拉伯平原上被風吹彎、格外扭曲的西部垂枝相思樹。On June 20, 2010, Marquis’s 38th birthday, she set out to walk from Siberia through Asia and, once back in Australia, trek to her beloved tree. The video of Marquis walking away from her starting point in Irkutsk feels like the setup for a horror film. “Hello, O.K., so here we are,” she said just before turning away from the camera. “Time to go now!” On her back is a 75-pound pack, and trailing behind her, overflowing with gear secured by bungee cords, is a custom-made cart that looks like a cross between a wheelbarrow and a giant roller bag — her dry-land sled. After Australia, Marquis couldn’t handle slaughtering more animals; she says it felt “like killing a friend.” So she decided to carry rice and hard biscuits (the latter inedible without “a nice, hot cup of tea”), which meant she would need to pull a cart. It now weighed 120 pounds.
2010年6月20日，馬奎斯在自己38歲生日這天踏上了18000英里的征程，從西伯利亞出發，然後穿過亞洲。這一次她又回到了澳大利亞，一點點地走向那顆心愛相思樹。馬奎斯從起點伊爾庫茨克出發時拍攝的視頻感覺有點像恐怖電影。“你們好！我們正在這裏，”馬奎斯說完便轉身離開了鏡頭。“該出發了！”她揹着75磅重的行李包，後面拖着一輛定製馬車。各種各樣的設備用彈力繩固定在馬車上，把馬車塞得滿滿當當。這輛馬車就是馬奎斯的旱地雪橇，其外形兼具獨輪車和巨型拖輪箱的特點。穿過澳大利亞後，馬奎斯不願再宰殺動物，因爲這感覺就像“殺自己的朋友”。所以她決定攜帶米飯和硬質餅乾(不就着“一杯熱騰騰的香茶”這餅乾就沒法吃)。這就意味着她要拉動一輛馬車，而這輛車現在已重達120磅。To prepare for the expedition, Marquis spent two years walking or snowshoeing 20 miles a day, wearing 75 pounds. On the trip itself, she carried, among other things, five pairs of underwear, a large pocketknife, wide-spectrum antibiotics, tea-tree oil for massaging her feet, a solar-powered charger, a beacon, a BlackBerry, a satellite phone, Crocs, a compass, a tiny emergency stash of amphetamines (“that’s the backup backup backup of the backup; in case you lose a foot and you need to get out and not feel a thing”) and pink merino-wool pajamas (“you put them on and you feel good, you feel gorgeous”).
爲準備此次遠征，馬奎斯用了兩年的時間準備：負重75磅，每天步行或穿雪鞋步行20英里。在此次旅途中，馬奎斯攜帶的物品包括五套內衣、一把大摺疊刀、廣譜抗生素、用來按摩足部的茶樹精油、一個太陽能充電器、一臺無線電發送器、一個黑莓手機、一臺衛星電話、一雙卡駱馳鞋、一個指南針、一小點應急用的安非他明（“這是備用品的備用品的備用品的備用品；萬一你斷了一隻腳，需要毫無痛覺地走出困境的時候才用”）和粉紅色美利奴羊毛睡衣（“穿上去感覺非常好，感覺自己非常性感漂亮”）。The afternoon she departed from Irktusk, Marquis walked just a few miles and set down her load. “That first day I don’t even eat or do anything,” Marquis explains. “By that point, I’m so exhausted, it’s unbelievable.”
那天下午，馬奎斯離開伊爾庫茨克踏上征程。但她只走了幾英里就卸下了負重。“第一天我一點東西都沒吃，一點事情都沒做，”馬奎斯解釋道。“到那時候，我就已經筋疲力盡，真是無法相信。”In truth, the first six months on Marquis’s trips are always harrowing. She describes it as “the washing machine”: endless agitation, physical pain, emotional pain, nonstop bargaining among opposing internal voices — the inner demons that whisper, Remember the delicious foam on the cafe latte? and the inner angels that reprimand, Coffee isn’t accessible now, so why talk about it? “You can’t move your hands, you can’t move your feet, you just want to die,” Marquis said. “You think about sleep all the time, because maybe sleep will set things straight.”
事實上，馬奎斯在前六個月的旅途中一直備受煎熬。她將其描述爲“洗衣機”：無休無止的攪動、身體上的痛苦、情感上的折磨、內心深處總是有兩種截然相反的聲音在談判 – 心中的惡魔在喃喃細語，記得拿鐵咖啡上的美味泡沫嗎？心中的天使在嚴厲斥責，現在根本喝不到咖啡，說這個幹嘛？“你的手動不了，你的腳也動不了，你只想去死，”馬奎斯說道。“你滿腦子都在想睡覺的事情，因爲一覺醒來後，可能就會發現大大小小的事情已經理順了。”A few months into her journey, Marquis shot a video of herself in her sleeping bag. Like a hostage clutching a newspaper, she holds a thermometer that reads minus 20 Celsius. “I don’t sleep much these days. I do not know what time it is. Maybe midnight, or something like that?” In the next day’s video, she looks wrecked. The previous night a wind- and sandstorm ripped across the Mongolian plains. To keep the nylon of her tent from tearing, Marquis removed the metal poles holding it up. But she still feared the gales would blow away her gear, so she unzipped herself from her collapsed shelter and lay atop her pack, tent and cart.
幾個月後，馬奎斯拍攝了一段自己縮在睡袋裏的視頻。她緊緊握着一支讀數爲零下20℃的溫度計，就像一個人質緊緊抓着一張報紙。“這些天來我睡的並不多。我根本不知道時間。現在是午夜？還是午夜前後？”在第二天的視頻裏，馬奎斯看上去非常憔悴。前天晚上，風沙暴在蒙古平原上肆虐。爲防止尼龍帳篷被撕裂，馬奎斯移走了起支撐作用的金屬桿。不過她還是害怕設備被狂風捲走，於是她走出塌下的帳篷，躺在包裹、帳篷和馬車上面，用身體壓住它們。Another night during those first months, while Marquis camped on a vast, overgrazed steppe that she describes as looking like an ugly golf course, she heard horses galloping toward her. The visitors turned out to be Mongol horsemen, all in traditional overcoat-like deels, making a vodka-fueled raid on her camp. After trying to steal her tent, they rode off. But for weeks, in the evenings, the men returned, treating Marquis, she said, as “the little entertainment.” To protect herself, she began waking before dawn, walking until midafternoon, then looking for a place to hide for the night — if possible, in a cement sewage pipe. “Everything is going on under those roads,” she said. “There is waste. There are dead sheep. But for me it was not a problem. I was safe.”
還有一件事也發生在最初幾個月的旅行裏。某天晚上，馬奎斯在一片過度放牧的遼闊乾草原(她稱此地爲醜陋的高爾夫球場)上宿營的時候，聽到有馬隊向他奔來。一羣身穿傳統蒙古長袍的蒙古騎手來到了她的身邊，藉着伏特加的酒勁襲擊了她的營地。這羣人爲偷取帳篷嘗試了一會之後，就騎馬離開了。但在接下來的幾周裏，每當夜幕降臨的時候，這羣人就會回來，“以戲弄馬奎斯爲樂。”爲保護自己，馬奎斯在黎明前就醒來，一直走到下午三點鐘左右，然後開始尋找夜晚的藏身之處。如果可以的話，就待在水泥污水管裏過夜。“污水管裏什麼亂七八糟的都有”她說到，“有垃圾。有死羊。但對我而這這些都不是問題。因爲我至少是安全的。”Eventually, however, Marquis passed out of Mongol territory. The washing-machine cycle ended. Her body changed, and her mind changed, too. Her senses sharpened to the point that she could smell shampoo on a tourist’s hair from a mile away. “One day you walk 12 hours, and you don’t feel pain,” Marquis said. The past and present telescope down to an all-consuming now. “There is no before or after. The intellect doesn’t drive you anymore. It doesn’t exist anymore. You become what nature needs you to be: this wild thing.”
終於，馬奎斯走出了蒙古。“洗衣機式”的怪圈終於也停止了。她的身體有了變化，心理也有了變化。她的感官變得異常敏銳，即使是一英里開外遊客頭上洗髮精的味道也可以嗅出。“你一天行走12小時，但一點都不覺得痛。”馬奎斯說道。過去和現在的美好展望在此刻全部消失於無形。“這裏沒有從前或以後。智力再也不能再引導你前進。智力已經不復存在了。你必須按照大自然的要求，迴歸野性。”As Francis Spufford writes in his history of British polar exploration, “I May Be Some Time,” for ages, men have wandered intentionally into extreme hardship, and they “are notoriously bad at saying why.” Marquis and her female peers — women who, say, walk across the Sahara alone with a camel or pull a 200-pound sled to the South Pole — don’t explain it much better. “People always ask, ‘Was it something in your childhood?’ ” says Felicity Aston, the first woman to ski solo across Antarctica. “I’ve thought about it endlessly: no.”
就像《過一會回來》(朗西斯·斯巴福德所寫的英國極地探險史)所描述的那樣，數十年來，男人們總是有意識地步入極苦之地，卻“衆所周知地不善於說明原因”。和男人們相比，馬奎斯和其他女子探險家在這方面也不太擅長，儘管她們之中不乏騎着駱駝、獨自穿越撒哈拉沙漠，或拉着200磅重的雪橇抵達南極點的勇士。人們總是問我，“你小時候是不是受了什麼刺激？”第一位獨自滑雪穿越南極洲的女子極地探險家費莉絲蒂·艾斯頓說道。“我思前想後，還是覺得自己沒受過什麼刺激。”The rest of Marquis’s trip was not all Zen bliss. Seven months into the walk, she lost a molar. Her gum abscessed, and the attendant infection, which couldn’t be controlled with the antibiotics, started moving down her neck, and she had to be evacuated from Mongolia. Marquis returned to the precise G.P.S. coordinates she left and made it to China, where, one day, some children followed her. She sang with them and taught them how to set up her tent — and then they stole her BlackBerry. In Laos, drug dealers descended on Marquis’s camp one night, firing their automatic weapons into the air. Soon after that, Marquis contracted dengue fever. She tied her left leg to a tree so she wouldn’t wander off in her delirium and drown herself in a river.
在接下來的旅程裏，馬奎斯體驗到的並不只有禪的喜悅。出發七個月後，她掉了一顆臼齒。牙齦化膿了，隨之而來的感染無法用抗生素控制，開始向脖子延伸，馬奎斯不得不從蒙古撤離。此後，根據GPS座標的精確指示，馬奎斯回到了中途離開的地方，繼續前進。她抵達中國，有一天遇到了幾個小孩。孩子們跟在她背後，她和他們一起唱歌，教他們如何把她的帳篷支起來。可是，這幾個小孩卻把她的黑莓手機偷走了。在老撾，毒品販子突然襲擊了她的營地，手持自動武器向空中開火。此後不久，馬奎斯染上了登革熱。她把左腿綁在樹上，以防在神經錯亂的時候四處亂走，把自己淹死在河裏。The trip smoothed out during the last year. Thailand was uneventful. Australia was lovely, despite the heat and the last couple of hundred miles, when Marquis’s legs cramped so badly that it was difficult to walk. She wrote a book about the experience, “Wild by Nature” (available only in French). The last page is profoundly anticlimactic. “I have arrived,” Marquis writes. “I touch the back of the tree with my right hand. ‘I’m back, darling.’ I sit down.”
最後一年的旅程比較順利。泰國之旅波瀾不驚。澳大利亞之旅則比較美好，儘管在她腿部嚴重抽筋難以移動的時候，還有最後幾百英里要走，天氣也非常酷熱。她把這段經歷寫成了《生來狂野》(只有法文版)。書的最後，用非常質樸的話語爲這段波瀾壯闊的旅程畫上了句點。“我到了，”馬奎斯寫道。“我右手撫摸着那棵我心愛的相思樹，‘親愛的，我回來了。’我坐了下來。”In Washington last winter, Marquis met with people from the National Geographic Speakers Bureau, because that’s what explorers do (and pretty much have always done): come home and sell their stories. It was nine months after re-entry into mainstream life, and she was happy to return to some physical comforts: sleeping in a bed, taking two baths a day. But she found being among people overwhelming, and her senses remained so acute that even just sitting in a cafeteria was grating. “You hear the dishwasher?” Marquis asked me, pointing toward an unseen kitchen. I shook my head. Marquis said, resigned, “There’s a radio playing back there, too.”
去年冬天，馬奎斯在華盛頓和國家地理演講人論壇的成員會面。探險家們通常都會做這樣一件事(他們基本上都這樣做了)：回到家鄉，用自己的探險經歷換取金錢。9個月後，馬奎斯迴歸了主流生活，能夠再次獲得某些身體上的舒適她感到很開心：睡在牀上，一天洗兩次澡。但她也發現自己處在人堆裏時會感到很壓抑；她的感官依舊敏銳，即使就在自助餐廳裏坐着也會感到很難受。“你聽見洗碗機的聲音了嗎？”馬奎斯問我，指着那看不見的廚房。我搖了搖頭。馬奎斯無奈放棄了，說道，“那裏還有臺收音機在播音。”Marquis plans to return to northwest Australia in 2016. She said it’s her “dream to go with just a sarong and a knife” — the ultimate test of survival. It’s hard not to wonder where these urges come from. Geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists and religious scholars have all taken stabs at answering, with unsatisfying results. But perhaps the real reason to court a sufferfest — to explore or adventure, or whatever you want to call it — is that it makes a person feel alive. The literature of survival is weirdly upbeat. A few days before dying, in 1912, Robert Falcon Scott wrote a letter telling a friend that he wished that friend were with him “to hear our songs and the cheery conversation.” The day of his death, Scott said of his trip, “How much better has it been than lounging in too great comfort at home.”
馬奎斯計劃於2016年重返澳大利亞西北部。她說“我的願望就是繫好圍裙，拿把刀，然後去旅行！”。這將是野外生存的終極試練。人們很難不好奇，這樣的渴求究竟來自何方？遺傳學家、神經學家、心理學家和宗教學者都想要解開這一謎題，但沒有人獲得令人滿意的結果。不過，能夠讓一個人感受到生命的氣息，也許就是追求“苦難之旅”的真正原因。這種“苦難之旅”可稱之爲“探險”，也可稱之爲“冒險”，或者你也可以自己想個說法。野外生存類的文學作品總是出奇地積極向上。1912年，還有幾天就將接到死神召喚的羅伯特·法爾肯·斯科特在信中對一位朋友說，他希望朋友能和自己一起“聆聽我們的歌聲，聆聽愉快的談話。”而在迎接死神的那一天，斯科特說起此次南極之旅，“來南極探險，比待在舒舒服服的家裏要美好得多。”Of course, if you don’t die — well, then the experience of extreme travel is fantastic. After swimming across a river infested with crocodiles, Marquis wrote that every time she finds herself in the bush, “my happiness increases tenfold.” Perhaps among the purest expressions of joy ever recorded is of the Norwegian explorer Aleksander Gamme on the 86th day of his unsupported 1,410-mile expedition from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole and back in 2012. Desperately hungry and dreadlocked, he comes upon a cache that he buried in the snow for himself a few months earlier. From the frozen duffel he pulls matches, Vaseline and zinc ointment. Then he starts screaming: “YEAAAAA! AAAAHHH! HAHA! YEAA! WHOOOWHOOO.” His elation at seeing a double pack of Cheez Doodles might be greater than any most of us will feel in our entire lives.
當然，如果你沒死，極限旅行將帶給你非常美妙的經歷。遊過一條遍佈鱷魚的河流之後，馬奎斯寫道每當她走進灌木叢，“我就會開心十倍。”2012年，挪威探險家亞歷山大·格默在無人支持的條件下，從海格拉斯灣出發，抵達南極點後返回，歷程1410英里。他在出發後第86天所說的話也許就是有記錄的、對喜悅之情最爲純粹的表述。那一天，飢腸轆轆，蓄着“駭人”長髮綹的格默意外發現了幾個月前自己埋在雪裏的給養。他從結了冰的旅行包裏拿出火柴，凡士林和氧化鋅軟膏，然後開始尖叫:“耶~~~~！！！啊啊~~！！！哈哈！！！耶~！喔~~喔~~”格默發現兩袋芝士奶酪(Cheez Doodles)後欣喜若狂，大多數人終其一生可能都未曾感受過這種狂喜。
