She could never forget the moth. It hatched from a cocoon kept by her teacher in a Mason jar, a huge Polyphemus silk moth with, potentially, velvety brown wings bearing a bright blue eyespot.(它从老师放在广口瓶里的茧中孵化出来，是一只巨大的多音天蚕蛾，本可能长着天鹅绒般的棕色翅膀，上面有明亮的蓝色眼斑。) At the moment of hatching, its wings produced a hardening varnish(清漆；硬化涂层) that would enable them to spread. Then it could fly. But the jar was too small, and the varnish worked too fast. The moth, when released on the street, could only walk. But it struggled gamely on(顽强地挣扎前行) with its useless lumps of wings, heading somewhere. In Annie Dillard’s mind, it was still going.
她永远忘不了那只蛾子。它从老师放在广口瓶里的茧中孵化出来，是一只巨大的多音天蚕蛾，本可能长着天鹅绒般的棕色翅膀，上面有明亮的蓝色眼斑。孵化那一刻，它的翅膀分泌出一种硬化清漆，使翅膀得以展开。然后它就能飞了。但瓶子太小，清漆干得太快。这只蛾子被放到街上时，只能爬行。但它带着那对无用的翅膀团块，顽强地挣扎前行，朝着某个方向。在安妮·迪拉德的脑海里，它仍在爬。
She was the only one to see it as it went. She was often a sole(唯一的；独自的) observer, quietly noting. A goldfinch shaking a seeding thistle until the down floated, “blind and sweet”, all over the landscape.(一只金翅雀摇晃着结籽的蓟草，直到绒毛“盲目而甜蜜地”飘满大地。) A mosquito biting a poisonous copperhead(铜头蝮). A leaf still curled like a thin, pale flame in its bud on a tulip tree. Frogs leaping like flares through a mesh of blue-green algae, “surfacing to awareness”. Another frog on the bank of Tinker Creek, stock still(一动不动), as a giant water bug slowly liquidised(液化；搅成液体) its insides and sipped its life away.
她是唯一看着它爬走的人。她常常是孤独的观察者，静静地记录。一只金翅雀摇晃着结籽的蓟草，直到绒毛“盲目而甜蜜地”飘满大地。一只蚊子叮咬一条有毒的铜头蝮。一片叶子仍在鹅掌楸的芽苞里卷曲，像一簇细弱苍白的火焰。青蛙像信号弹一样跃过蓝绿藻的网，“浮出水面，进入意识”。另一只青蛙在廷克溪岸边，一动不动，一只巨型水虫正慢慢液化它的内脏，啜饮它的生命。
It was Tinker Creek that made her famous. The book she wrote about her thoughts and sightings there, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, won her a Pulitzer(普利策奖) in 1975, when she was only 28. She was the youngest woman to win one, and the first in the man’s world of nature-writing. But fame was the last thing she wanted(她最不想要的东西). All she had needed for years was that damp, broken ground near Roanoke, Virginia, the sycamore log on which she sat, the noisy creek with its silvery shiners swarming in the shallows, and the Osage orange tree from which rose, once, a hundred red-winged blackbirds.(多年来她需要的只是弗吉尼亚州罗阿诺克附近那片潮湿破碎的土地，她坐过的那根梧桐木，那条喧闹的溪流，浅滩上成群游动的银色雅罗鱼，还有那棵奥塞奇橙树——有一次，一百只红翅黑鹂从树上飞起。) When the Pulitzer news came, she was washing spinach. She wouldn’t have to do that any more, the pressman said. But she would, and did.
是廷克溪让她出了名。她关于在那里所思所见的书《溪畔天问》为她赢得了1975年的普利策奖，当时她只有28岁。她是最年轻的女性获奖者，也是自然写作这个男性世界里的第一位。但名声是她最不想要的东西。多年来她需要的只是弗吉尼亚州罗阿诺克附近那片潮湿破碎的土地，她坐过的那根梧桐木，那条喧闹的溪流，浅滩上成群游动的银色雅罗鱼，还有那棵奥塞奇橙树——有一次，一百只红翅黑鹂从树上飞起。普利策奖的消息传来时，她正在洗菠菜。记者说，她再也不用洗菠菜了。但她还是会洗，而且确实洗了。