《回水》纪录片带你乘独木舟穿越最不可能的荒野地区

《回水》纪录片带你乘独木舟穿越最不可能的荒野地区

The new documentary "Back Water" asks a lot of questions, but it mostly leaves the answers to the viewer. It's those lingering questions that kept this quiet, even relaxing, viewing experience stuck in my mind for days afterwards.

新纪录片《回水》提出了很多问题，但大部分问题的答案都留给了观众。正是这些挥之不去的问题，让我在接下来的几天里一直保持着这种安静，甚至放松的观影体验。

Clocking in at a mere 72 minutes, "Back Water," seems at first like a simple environmental travel documentary, if set in a unusual locale for such a project.

在短短72分钟的《回水》中，如果故事发生在一个不同寻常的地方，乍一看就像是一部简单的环保旅游纪录片。

'Back Water' explores a wilderness area that's the literal backyard of millions of people — the Hackensack River and New Jersey Meadowlands. (Photo: Jon Cohrs, 'Back Water')

Director Jon Cohrs wanted to take his skills and point of view as a former wilderness guide at Glacier National Park in Alaska and bring them to a place where they hadn't been applied before: The wetlands adjacent to the most densely populated area in the United States. He spent 10 days navigating the Hackensack River into the New Jersey Meadowlands.

导演乔恩·科尔斯曾在阿拉斯加的冰川国家公园担任荒野向导，他想利用自己的技能和观点，把它们带到一个以前从未去过的地方:美国人口最密集地区附近的湿地。他花了10天的时间航行于哈肯萨克河到新泽西州的牧场。

But this isn't a man-alone-in-the-wilderness situation. Cohrs brings along a crew that includes Nicola Twilley, a contributing writer at The New Yorker who hosts Gastropod, a podcast about food science and history; the hunter and hairdresser Sara Jensen; the cook and writer Erin Tolman; the lawyer Gillian Cassell-Stiga, who was raised in New Jersey just a few miles from the wetlands; Derek Hallquist, the film's lead cameraman and director of "Denial,"a film about 2018 Vermont gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist; and the sound person, Patrick of "Get Me Roger Stone."

但这并不是一个人在野外的情况。科尔斯带来了一批工作人员，包括Nicola Twilley，《纽约客》的撰稿人，主持美食播客，一个关于食物科学和历史的播客;猎人兼美发师莎拉·詹森;厨师兼作家艾琳·托尔曼;在新泽西长大的律师吉莉安·卡斯尔-斯蒂加，离湿地只有几英里;德里克·霍尔奎斯特是该片的首席摄影师，也是《否认》的导演。《否认》讲述的是2018年佛蒙特州州长候选人克莉丝汀·霍尔奎斯特的故事;还有《给我罗杰·斯通》的配音演员帕特里克。"

What is wilderness?

荒野是什么?

While the seven-person team spent a lot of time on the water, they did step on dry land to make camp, pick up supplies, and sometimes, to explore. (Photo: Jon Cohrs, 'Back Water')

Why would a former Alaskan wilderness guide choose to lovingly document a journey down a river that's crisscrossed by busy highways and commuter train lines, and whose shores are home to abandoned factories? "I really wanted to look at our experience of wilderness," Cohrs said in a virtual panel discussion via the New York Hall of Science. "It was an opportunity to challenge our beliefs around this space as well as take on the naive idea of navigating down this river and camping like we would if we were at one of these famous wilderness areas."

为什么一位前阿拉斯加荒野向导会选择深情地记录下这条河流的旅程?这条河流纵横交错，繁忙的高速公路和通勤火车线路纵横交错，河岸上坐落着废弃的工厂。“我真的很想看看我们在野外的经历，”科尔斯在纽约科学馆的虚拟小组讨论中说。“这是一个挑战我们对这个空间的信念的机会，同时也让我们有了一个天真的想法，那就是沿着这条河航行，就像我们在这些著名的荒野地区露营一样。”

Whenever the camera more closely focuses on the group's activities — packing up the boats, cooking meals over a camp stove, looking at an interesting plant, or in one case, a muskrat skull, you can forget they were often just a few thousand feet from a mall or big-box store. It does feel like a wilderness space, and when the camera pulls back to show the larger scene — maybe a shopping complex or multiple bridges in the distance, or in one shot, the lights of Manhattan at night — you are reminded this isn't the wilderness we're used to seeing.

当镜头更近距离地聚焦于该组织的活动时——准备船、在野营炉上做饭、看一种有趣的植物，或者看一只麝鼠头骨，你可能会忘记它们通常离商场或大卖场只有几千英尺。它感觉像是荒野空间,当镜头拉回显示更大的场景,也许是远处的购物中心或许多桥梁,或是曼哈顿晚上的灯光的镜头——提醒我们这不是我们习惯的旷野。

The film ultimately makes a strong case to me that natural places, especially waterways, can serve as spaces where city residents who might not be able to go hundreds of miles away to a lake or to the mountains. And once they cherish a place, or even just understand and respect how and why it works as a water filtration system, wildlife habitat, and storm-surge buffer, they might more likely to protect it.

这部电影最终做出了有力的证明。对我来说,自然的地方,尤其是水道,可以作为无法去数百英里外的湖或山上的城市居民的空间。一旦他们珍惜一个地方，甚至只是理解和尊重它作为水过滤系统、野生动物栖息地和风暴缓冲带的工作方式和原因，他们就会更有可能保护它。