When I was young, as an early intellectual youth, without exception, I chose to go to the countryside to join the team, the years of the team were very wonderful, although the days were very hard, but full of energy, the story was even more wonderful, it was the most precious experience in life, and in the later life, I often thanked that precious time.
The place to go to the countryside is in a very remote mountain village in the northwest, which is located in the middle of a continuous mountain, and there is a river called the Bitter Water River more than ten miles outside the village. The origin of the name is because the water in this river is alkaline, and after flowing through the Loess Plateau, the saline in the soil penetrates into the water, making the whole river bitter and difficult to swallow.
People can't drink, but animals can, and they are the source of life for livestock and wild animals in the mountains, so the many canyons washed out by floods on both sides of the river have become drinking water channels for wild animals, often called wolf roads, because wolves in the mountains always occupy a priority position.
gorge
The river flows directly eastward into the vast Yellow River, and in the summer floods often flood, and the perennial floods hit the soft loess soil, washed down the mountains, and the river channels continued to migrate inward. Over time, a narrow plain was washed out in this area, and the convenient transportation here formed a town, that is, Luxi Town.
The place where I went to the countryside was a remote mountain village in Luxi Town, in the middle of a dozen miles of mountains outside the town. It is completely dependent on the sky to eat, and people's drinking water is completely dependent on rain and winter snow. People dug many cellars to store rainwater in the summer, and pushed snow into them in the winter to drink after sedimentation.
Now people are rich in material, can not appreciate the taste, this accumulated rain has a strong earthy smell, precipitated for a long time can not be removed, not to mention to collect rainwater frequently, most of the time, people drink water is turbid, the taste is indescribable.
Bitter Water River
However, in the past, people were not so particular about life, and after going to the countryside, in addition to labor, life was quite OK. In my spare time, I can play the flute to pass the time, because I like musical instruments, there are many programs in the village during the New Year's Festival, often follow the village elderly to learn, the most common musical instrument in the village is to beat the gong and drum, I have a special love for gongs.
Because I have literary and artistic expertise, one year on New Year's Day, the town held a literary and artistic performance, and I was selected to participate in the performance in the town, and the instrument was a flute and a gong. In the years when spiritual culture was extremely scarce, such activities were really rare, and I was very excited in my heart and could not wait to leave.
Although the sun has begun to sink in the west, but the heart of joy I still can't help but leave early, there are some partners in the town who go to the countryside together, you can talk all night long at night, just like the young people now gather together, the entertainment activity at that time is to talk by candlelight.
Go to the countryside to know the youth
I took the gong for the performance and rode the donkey in the team, and in order to cut a short path, I chose a canyon, which was a canyon that was washed out by the flood, connecting the mountains and the Bitter Water River, and in the dry season, people and animals could pass. The canyon is very ordinary, one of the thousands of ordinary nameless canyons in the mountains, but they all have a common name, that is, the wolf road. It meant a passage for wolves to drink water, but despite the name, I had never seen a wolf haunt, so I didn't care.
As soon as the donkey entered the canyon, the sky was even darker, and the canyon covered the sky, blocking the sunset halfway up the mountainside, and only the top of the canyon could be seen as if it had become a blue dragon dotted with red clouds. At this moment, it does not look fierce, on the contrary, it is some magnificent and colorful domineering, which makes the original lack of color in the northwest yellow land more of a rare charm.
The Loess Plateau at night is a rolling mountain
Along the way, enjoy the night view of the mountains, the layers of mountains in the distance rise and fall, the ravines in the daytime, all over the rugged mountains, suddenly become very flat under the fading afterglow, like a huge bun stack on the earth. I was struck by this rare beauty that had never been discovered before, this vast and magnificent Loess Plateau, with no end in sight, made me feel even more small in the endless darkness.
The beauty is intoxicating, and the hazy night makes me poetic, and I can't help but want to write a poem for this moonlight and mountains:
Thousands of miles of loess ditch, water through the valley of all things.
The mountains and valleys are like a roaring wind, and the day and night are like dragons.
Just as I was painstakingly reciting the poem on the horse's mouth, the donkey under the crotch did not seem to be very satisfied with the clumsiness, its head swaying from side to side, its ears swirling uneasily around, and its steps were a little messy and seemed restless.
People and horses
I quickly grabbed the reins, stabilized the donkey, and gently patted the donkey's neck with my hand, signaling it to calm down. Suddenly, a huge continuous rattling sound came from the hillside, startling a group of wild pigeons that had just nested. This sudden sound startled me, and I hurried to look up, but I couldn't see anything, the sky was getting darker, and the place where my eyes were engulfed by the night seemed to hide a monster. Just when I was panicking, I saw a few gravel falling from the mountain and bouncing up at the feet of the donkey.
Oh, it turned out to be a false alarm, and I forcibly calmed down, and only then did I have a fear of this darkness, and urged the donkey to move forward quickly. The donkey seemed to feel the trepidation of its master, and its pace could not help but speed up, the pace was a little messy, obviously frightened, the breath was a little heavy, but the speed was getting faster and faster, as if it was running away from something.
Seeing that I was almost at the mouth of the canyon, I could already hear the sound of the grunting river in the bitter river, and my heart settled down slightly, wiped the sweat on my forehead, stabilized the donkey, and slowly walked towards the river.
wolf
Suddenly, the donkey's body trembled violently, and it braked violently, leaning back, pacing in place at a loss. If I hadn't tightened the reins, it would have turned around and fled, and I was horrified, and I fixed my eyes on a big black dog standing in the bend ahead, it slowly approached the donkey, and then looked closely, Oh my God, this is a big dog, this is clearly a wolf.
Before I could react, the wolf trotted up a few steps and jumped up, plunging straight into the donkey's neck. Frightened, the donkey retreated to avoid, but was still bitten by the wolf's neck, but this donkey was also an experienced old donkey, and it immediately rolled on the spot, and one turned over and threw off the wolf, and also threw me to the ground.
Donkeys and wolves
Next, the donkey immediately stood up again, and when the wolf did not react, it grabbed the wolf's neck and threw it back and forth, and the wolf was thrown out. But it quickly flew back, went around to the back of the donkey, bit down the hind legs, and the donkey kicked away the wild wolf with a painful kick, and then ran away with a cigarette, and the wolf was also confused, chased for a while without catching up, and ran back and forth.
At this time, I woke up from a dream, the wolf with red eyes, slowly approaching me, I hid in the mountain pass, with my back against the stone, reached out and took the flute from my backpack, shouting loudly, while swinging hard at the wolf, snapping! Due to the excessive force, the flute slammed heavily into the stone and broke into several pieces.
Seeing that I had no weapon, the wolf approached again, and in a panic, I leaned against the stone and hurriedly blocked my backpack in front of me. The wolf was getting closer, and the saliva in his mouth was already dripping on the backpack. Frightened, I jerked my backpack back, and suddenly there was a bang, and the wolf jumped backwards in fright.
This sound made me wake up like a dream, yes, the old people in the village said that wolves are most afraid of iron. I hurriedly took out the gong from my backpack, plucked up enough courage to jump up from the ground, rushed to the wolf is a violent knock, a huge gong sound exploded in the wolf's ears, like thunder throughout the canyon, in the endless echo of the canyon like an endless war drum, the great courage generated by the complete fear in my heart made me almost hoarse and exhausted to roar: Hit the wolf.
Fleeing wolves
This sudden loud noise frightened the wolf into a howl, and it almost crawled away with a rolling belt, and in a moment it disappeared without a trace, and calm returned to the canyon, as if nothing had happened just now.
Later, I heard my friend say that I was banging on a gong and walking all the way to town, until I kept knocking on the door of my friend's house. Then I fell ill for several days. I also heard from the villagers that the next morning, the donkey had returned to the village alone.