Seeking America’s Quietest Spots: The Quest for Silence in a Loud World
尋找美國最寧靜的所在
By Jess Bidgood

The hiker trudged up a logging road and into a valley, tracing a route that seemed unremarkable. There were no sweeping views of the mountains that towered nearby. There was no summit to scale. Yet he stopped suddenly, jubilant, after about 4 miles of walking. He had found exactly what he was searching for: quiet.
這位健行者奮力走上產業道路，進入一個山谷，循著一條看似平凡無奇的路徑前進。那兒並沒有附近高山的寬闊視野，沒有峰頂可以攀登。然而在走了約四哩後，他突然十分欣喜地停了下來。他真的找到了他在尋找的東西：安靜。

“Let’s see,” said the hiker, Dennis Follensbee, “how we experience three minutes of silence.”
這位健行者丹尼斯．佛倫斯比說：「讓我們瞧瞧，如何體驗三分鐘的寂靜。」

In these loud times – with political foes yelling on television, trucks rumbling through streets, and smartphones chirping all around – who doesn’t want a little peace and quiet? But some wilderness lovers have taken their aversion to the cacophony of the modern world a step further, traveling to some of the country’s most remote areas in a quest for utter silence.
在這個喧囂的時代，政治仇敵在電視上吼叫，卡車轟隆隆穿過街道，到處都是智慧手機嘀啾作響，誰不想要一點點平和與寧靜？然而一些荒野愛好者卻把對刺耳的現代世界的嫌惡更往前推進一步，旅行到這個國家某些最偏僻的地區，尋求徹底的寂靜。

Armed with Google Maps, bushwhacking tools and 16 years of experience hiking in the area, Follensbee, a programmer from Lebanon, New Hampshire, is on an exhaustive search for the noiseless hollows and dells of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
備妥谷歌地圖、叢林開路工具以及在該地區健行16年的經驗，來自新罕布夏州雷巴嫩市的程式設計師佛倫斯比，正在新州的白山中仔細搜尋沒有噪音的凹地和山谷。

“I know there must be places I can go to have peace,” said Follensbee, 39, who has mapped 23 quiet places so far, though he has shared the exact locations only with family members and close friends. (If quiet places are widely known, he reasons, “they cease to be quiet.”)
39歲的佛倫斯比說：「我知道那兒一定有我可以享有平靜的地方。」目前為止他已勘察到23個安靜的地點，不過他只和家人好友分享確實的位置。（他解釋道，如果安靜的地方廣為人知，「它們就不再安靜了。」）

Connoisseurs of quiet say it is increasingly difficult, even in the wilderness, to escape the sounds of vehicles, industries, voices. A study published last year in the academic journal Science, found that noise pollution was doubling sound levels in much of the nation’s conserved land, like national parks and areas preserved by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
追求寧靜的行家說，即使是在野外，要避開車輛、產業及人所產生的聲音，也愈來愈困難。去年刊載於「科學」期刊的一項研究結果發現，在國家保護區內的許多地方，噪音汙染已使聲級翻倍，像是國家公園和聯邦土地管理局的保留地。

Noise that humans create can be annoying but also dangerous to animals who rely on hearing to seek their prey and avoid predators. “We’re really starting to understand the consequences of noise and the importance of natural sound,” said Rachel Buxton, a conservation biologist at Colorado State University who worked on the study.
人類製造的噪音不但惱人，對於依賴聽覺尋找獵物及躲避掠食者的動物而言也很危險。負責這項研究的科羅拉多州立大學保育生物學家芮秋．巴克斯頓說：「我們確實開始了解噪音造成的後果與自然聲音的重要性。」

In Washington state, Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist – part of a small field of experts who study natural soundscapes – has made it a mission to preserve what he calls “1 square inch” of quiet in Olympic National Park. He and other advocates have raised concerns about noise from loud Navy jets and other air traffic, but says he believes that Olympic National Park is one of only about 12 places in the continental United States where a person could listen for 15 minutes and hear no man-made sound.
在華盛頓州，聽覺生態學家戈登．漢普頓已擔起一項使命，要在奧林匹克國家公園內保留他所謂的「一平方吋」的寧靜之地，他是研究自然音景的少數專家之一。他和其他倡議者已喚起對來自大聲的海軍噴射機和其他空中交通噪音的關注，但他說，相信奧林匹克國家公園是美國本土碩果僅存的12處地點之一，在這些地方一個人可在15分鐘之中不聽到任何人為聲音。

“We need to defend quiet places that remain as well as clean up places that should be quiet,” Hempton said.
漢普頓說：「我們需要保護仍然寧靜的地方，同時清理那些應該安靜的地方。」

原文參照：
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/23/us/silence-escapes-noise-pollution-travel.html

2018-10-28 聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 莊蕙嘉

說文解字看新聞 莊蕙嘉

這篇文章介紹在現代社會充斥的人為噪音中，尋求一方寧靜之所的人。文中每一段皆出現quiet或silence這兩個字，大致上都是「安靜」之意，不過細究仍有差異。

quiet是形容詞，也是名詞，可解釋為「安靜、寧靜、不出聲的」等意，指環境中「沒有聲音或極少聲音」，是相對狀態下的安靜，作名詞時意義與quietness幾無差異。

silence指「安靜、寂靜、無聲」的環境狀態，比quiet更靜悄無聲，是接近絕對安靜的狀態，形容詞為silent。例如教師維持教室秩序時會說be quiet，指「不要說話、安靜」；silence則強調「肅靜，不可出聲」，語氣較嚴肅。

這兩個字也可以形容人，用法不同。quiet形容「文靜、不太說話」，silent則是「緘默的、寡言的」。

silence亦常用於表現寂靜或沉默的境界與心理狀態，例如經典西洋老歌「The Sound of Silence」和改編成電影的日本作家遠藤周作小說「沉默」。

Amsterdam’s Plea: Visit, but Behave
荷京敬告遊客：歡迎來玩 請守規矩
By Christopher F. Schuetze

It is not a problem many vacation destinations spend much effort worrying about or money trying to fix: the wrong kind of tourist.
這並不是個讓許多度假勝地大傷腦筋或花大錢去處理的問題：不規矩的遊客。

But that is the challenge increasingly faced by Amsterdam, where visitor numbers have shot up more than 60 percent in the past decade, bolstered by low-cost flights, cheap accommodation and the ease of traveling across open European borders.
這卻是荷蘭首都阿姆斯特丹日益面臨的挑戰。過去十年來，由於低價航空興起，旅宿便宜，加上歐洲開放邊界使跨境旅遊更便易，阿姆斯特丹的到訪旅遊人次激增超過六成。

With its centuries-old canals, vibrant historic center and flourishing art scene, Amsterdam takes pride in its cultural riches. But there is a growing perception that some who come to the city are more interested in less high-minded pursuits – namely, marijuana and prostitution, both of which are largely legal – and may be doing more harm than good.
阿姆斯特丹以其文化資產自豪，有數百年之久的運河、耀目的古城區和發達的藝術景觀。不過，人們逐漸察覺，有些來到這城市的遊客，對比較不高尚的事物更感興趣—具體地說，就是大麻和娼妓，兩者大致上都合法—而這些遊客對阿姆斯特丹而言可能害多於利。

Other destinations have struggled under the sheer weight of visitors: the Galápagos Islands; Dubrovnik, Croatia; and Venice have all expressed concern about “overtourism,” with technology, including apps like Airbnb, often cited as a driver of the problem.
另有些旅遊勝地也對遊客過多感到難以招架，太平洋東部加拉巴哥群島、克羅埃西亞南部港市杜布羅夫尼克和義大利水都威尼斯都曾對「過度旅遊（或稱超限旅遊）」現象表示憂慮，而科技（包括Airbnb等應用程式）往往被說成推手之一。

But in Amsterdam, it is not just the number of tourists that pose a problem. It’s how they behave.
不過在阿姆斯特丹，造成問題的不只是遊客人次太多，更在於他們的行為。

Officials are trying to address the issue. Femke Halsema, the new mayor, visited the red-light district in the De Wallen section of the city in July, the month after she took office. Soon after, her administration announced a set of measures intended to curb misconduct.
官員們正在努力解決問題。新市長菲美可．赫塞馬於上任的次月，也就是7月，視察市內的德瓦倫紅燈區，不久後她的政府就宣布了一系列措施，用以抑制遊客的不當行為。

They include on-the-spot collection of fines as high as 140 euros ($165) for public urination, drunkenness or excessive noise (enforcement agents will be equipped with hand-held devices to take card payments); rigorous street cleaning; and the hiring of additional “hosts,” or security workers in orange T-shirts, who are trained to give information and remind people of the rules, which include no drinking in the streets and no photographing prostitutes.
這些措施包括：對隨地小便、醉酒且行為失序或製造過量噪音者，當場開罰140歐元（約台幣5000元，執法人員且隨身攜帶手持裝置，以接受刷卡）；一絲不苟地清掃街道；額外雇用穿著橘色T恤的保全人員「主人」，這些人受過訓練，為的是提供資訊並提醒遊客規則，包括不要當街喝酒和對娼妓拍照。

Perhaps most important, the city is also betting on a marketing campaign to persuade visitors to respect the city and its rules.
也許最重要的是，阿姆斯特丹還投注心力發動宣傳攻勢，說服遊客尊重這個城市及其規則。

Iain Mills, a 24-year-old Briton who recently traveled to Amsterdam with a group of friends, is the sort of visitor the city wants to reach. Having taken a low-cost flight leaving midmorning from London, Mills was enjoying a beer on a canal-side terrace by early afternoon.
最近跟一群朋友來阿姆斯特丹玩的24歲英國人米爾斯，就是這個城市想說服的旅客類型。他上午十點左右從倫敦搭廉價航空班機過來，午後不久就在運河畔的露臺上享用啤酒。

The convenience of the trip was just one of the attractions, he said. “It’s not my first time in Amsterdam and won’t be my last,” he added.
米爾斯說，方便前來只是阿姆斯特丹吸引他的原因之一，「這不是我第一次來，也不會是最後一次」。

Mascha ten Bruggencate, a city administrator who has been tasked with carrying out the new policies, said there was an obvious place to start. “The red-light district is symbolic of the problem,” she said.
市府行政官員瑪夏．田布魯根卡特負責執行這些新政策，她說，有個明顯下手處，「紅燈區就是問題的象徵」。

原文參照：                     
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/world/europe/amsterdam-tourism-cannabis-prostitution.html

2018-10-28聯合報．D4．紐約時報賞析 李京倫