His father, ‖ Liu Zhihong, who loves the mountains

Father who loves yamano

Liu Zhihong

Although his father was not a member of the geological team, he loved the mountains and the geological life.

Finally, in the cold and dry winter of ten years ago, my father abandoned his relatives who were in love day and night, and walked to the edge of life, to the eternal smile in the black-rimmed oak box and the mountains that gave birth to him, quietly embracing his dreams, his love, all his hopes and all his regrets. At that time, I was working in the Qilian Mountain Mine, six hundred kilometers away, and the white snow blurred my vision and hit my soul coldly. I wanted to cry without tears, but I could only let the unbearable sorrow and the cries of the northwest wind flow quietly in my memory.

Yeah, it was my father who influenced my lifelong choices. Now, as an old geological team member, I can't help but feel a wave of emotion in my heart when I see my father's simple clothes and kind smile in my dreams. Father, how can I be separated from your teachings and encouragement in the past twenty years when I have been able to create and develop in the mountains?

I remember when I was a child, my father's grain store was set up in the courtyard of the geological team, shouldering the task of supplying grain and oil for geological workers, which was also the special treatment enjoyed by the geological team in the era of planned economy. Because I had more contact with geological workers, my father often happily told me interesting stories about the mountains and the legends of geological team members after returning home, so that my young soul was filled with the light and heat of yearning for the mountains. Once, my father brought me a children's book of "People and Treasures" through a friend of the geological team. In that book, I gradually learned about the important role of mineral deposits in human development and the legendary stories and romantic tastes of geological team members who braved the wind and rain, picniced and slept in search of mineral deposits for the motherland, and deepened my vision of the mountains. At the age of nineteen, under the guidance of my father, I gave up the opportunity to enter the factory, resolutely stepped into the ranks of the mountains, chose this manly profession full of male color, and began a youthful life in the baptism of the Gobi in the wilderness, wind, frost, snow and rain.

Field geological work is indeed romantic and interesting, but more is full of a wild hardship and a vivid creative color of life. It is the crystallization of sweat and mountains, an irregular figure of noble spirit of entrepreneurship and loneliness and hardship. In the face of all this, my heart gradually began to tire, began to soften, began to fear the kind of drilling career that was painful and laborious, and threw my inner bitterness to my father with a letter. A month later, I received a letter from my father. In his letter, he did not preach with a straight face, nor did he express his father's love, but with his understanding and love of the mountains, he asked me to think deeply about the subject of geological life, and used his arduous experience in childhood to show that people's hardships are not terrible, but the terrible thing is the lack of the tenacity and will to forge ahead; at the end of the letter, he told me to write more letters to him, and to write down the most memorable things in the day's work, and take them home for him to see after the end of the year.

Later, my father's letter flew into my life every twenty days. Reading my father's simple and kind words is like reading an unbound life textbook. The philosophy of life and social landscape that are not in the classics spread out in the mountains and fields, flowing into my soul, making me sober, letting me encourage myself, letting me melt the hardships and sweats in my work into the roar of the drilling rig and sending them to my rough pen. Gradually, I realized the true meaning of love and the selflessness of dedication, realized that my father's good intention contained deep love, and realized that the pursuit of the meaning of life would be explained in creation. Therefore, in the face of the roughness and hardships of the mountains, I embraced for more than twenty years with a relaxed state of mind, and it should be said that my father's words and deeds and love supported my spiritual pillar rooted in the mountains.

Although my father loved the mountains, he did not have the experience of living in the mountains after all; at the same time, there are very few themes reflecting geological life in China's film and television films, and whenever I talk about this, my father always regrets it. But before his death, after the television series adapted from the reportage "The Republic Should Not Be Forgotten" was broadcast on television, my father was very excited. I remember that when the film was played, my father always made a cup of tea early, sat on the sofa in front of the TV, and while watching, he told his mother, as if he was the hero who developed and built mining cities such as Baiyin, Jinchang, and Jiayuguan. Sometimes, when he talks about his happiness, he dances with his hands and feet, a frank appearance; sometimes he also misses the old friends of the geological team, saying that there will be no contact after retirement, I don't know how they are, and he says with emotion that the people of the geological team have contributed so much to the country that society should not forget them.

Whenever I saw my father's sincere expression, my heart couldn't help but shake, and my soul also became excited. Yes, nowadays, many people yearn for the prosperity of the metropolis, who cares about the sacred corner of geological work? And my father, in his ancient years, also understood and supported geological work in his own unique way of thinking, which made people really moved. Although my father was an ordinary and ordinary person, a person who had no direct relationship with the mountains all his life, his vast love should be a supreme love in the world; because of this love, I stood up from countless failures and became brave and wise, making the mountains an inexhaustible wealth for my life.

The mountains and rivers could not bear too much sorrow, and my father finally did not enter the seventy-seventh cold winter, and walked to the mountain wilderness that the Great Northwest would always belong to him. When I arrived home from the snowy Qilian Mountain mining area, my father had left calmly and peacefully. My mother told me with tears in her eyes that my father had repeatedly asked about me before he died. He smiled with relief when he knew that the geological team had made a difference in the tide of the market economy.

Maybe life is such a process, so that you can not find the lost yesterday, can only find the true meaning of the flash on the title page of memory; perhaps the shortcomings of life are to let you dissolve the most real life experience in the sky of thought, the feeling of tragic flesh and blood, the other feeling of desolate thinking condensation... Looking at the kind father in the black-rimmed portrait frame, tears blurred my vision, I seemed to see the winding mountain path of the vast wasteland, and my father was also like an old geological worker, facing the wind and rain, stepping on the rugged mountains, and walking firmly towards the place where the sun rose, walking...

About the Author

Liu Zhihong, male, political engineer, member of China Land and Resources Writers Association, member of Gansu Provincial Writers Association. Worked for Gansu Natural Resources Newspaper. His works have been published in dozens of newspapers and magazines such as China Land and Resources Daily, Gansu Daily, Prose Poems, Qinghai Lake, and History of Bashu. He has published a collection of prose poems , " Pastoral Songs of Feelings " , " The Countryside in the Depths of Thought " , " Echoes of The Years " and other works.