Essay
Cycling to the Border Woods for Scrap Oak
骑车去边境的林子捡废橡木
Sunday, six in the morning, and Brest is still grey. I take the road east out of the city, past the last rows of garages, and the Mukhavets keeps me company on the left for the first ten kilometres. There is almost no traffic at that hour. My legs are cold for half an hour and then they are not, and the rest of the ride is breathing and looking.
I go out for wood. The forests along the border are full of villages that emptied out slowly, and behind them there are barns that fell down on their own. Nobody owns a fallen barn in any way that matters. I have a route I ride from April to November, and I know which ruins still have boards worth carrying and which have already been picked over.
Why the Bicycle and Not a Car
A car would let me take too much. With a bicycle the limit is fixed: what fits on the rack and does not make the frame wobble on the turns. That limit has saved me from a lot of bad wood. Also, in a car you only arrive; on a bicycle you cross the distance, and you remember the road you carried it home on, which for me is part of owning it.
You can only carry home what you can actually use. The bicycle decides that for me.
Last Sunday I found an oak board under what was left of a roof, dark with age and old rain, two metres long, full of square nails. I pulled them one at a time with a claw hammer, a block of wood under the head so the surface would not bruise. It took an hour. The board was worth the hour.
Counting the Rings
Oak from this region grows slowly. Later I sanded a corner and counted close to ninety rings in fifteen centimetres. That tree was standing when the barn was put up. Whoever nailed it together had no idea they were making something for a stranger to carry home on a bicycle in the next century.
Every nail in old wood is a small record of somebody in a hurry.
The way back is heavier and slower, and it rained from the halfway point. I stopped under a bus shelter in a village whose name I keep forgetting and ate bread with lard and salt, standing up, listening to the water come off the roof. The board stuck out behind me the whole way and nobody asked about it.
At home I stacked it against the north wall of the workshop to dry, which will take two years, maybe three. I wrote the date on the end in pencil, the way I always do. It is not a valuable board. It is a board I know the whole story of, and in February, when the shop is cold and I am gluing something that will not hold, that will be worth having.
中文译文
星期日早上六点，布列斯特还是灰的。我出城往东骑，骑过最后几排车库，头十公里穆哈韦茨河一直在左手边陪着我。那个钟点几乎没有人。前半个小时腿是冷的，之后就不冷了，剩下的路只有呼吸和看。
我是去找木头的。边境的林子边上有不少慢慢空掉的村子，村子后头有自己塌掉的谷仓。一座塌了的谷仓，没有人真的拥有它。我有一条从四月骑到十一月的路线，知道哪些废墟里还有值得搬的板子，哪些已经被人翻遍了。
为什么骑车，不开车
开车会让我拿得太多。骑车的限制是死的：后架能绑多少，转弯时车架不晃多少。这个限制替我挡掉了很多坏木头。而且在车里你只是到达；在自行车上你是穿过那段距离的，你会记得这块木头是从哪条路上带回来的，对我来说，那也算拥有它的一部分。
你只能把真正用得上的东西带回家。这件事自行车替我做主。
上个星期日，我在一片剩下的屋顶底下找到一块橡木板，被年头和旧雨水浸得发黑，两米长，满是方头钉。我把它们一颗一颗起出来，锤头下垫一块木头，免得压伤表面。花了一个小时。这块板子值得。
数年轮
这一带的橡木长得慢。后来我磨开一个角，十五厘米里数出将近九十道年轮。谷仓盖起来的时候，那棵树还站着。把它钉上去的人不会想到，自己是在给一个世纪之后骑自行车来的陌生人做东西。
老木头上的每一颗钉子，都是某个人当时很着急的小记录。
回程更重也更慢，走到一半开始下雨。我在一个村子的公交候车棚下躲雨，村名我总是记不住，站着吃了抹猪油撒盐的面包，听雨水从棚顶往下掉。板子一路支在我身后，没有人问起它。
到家我把它靠北墙码在工房里晾，要两年，也许三年。我在端头用铅笔写了日期，跟平时一样。它不是什么值钱的板子。它是一块我知道全部来历的板子，等到二月，工房很冷、我正胶着一样怎么也粘不牢的东西时，这一点会很要紧。
