Hit (a)

Three days after the shooting, Mr. Yichen returned with his son, Liang Xin, from a nearby big city.

I haven't seen Liang Xin for some days, and his height and weight have jumped up a lot, and now he has completely grown into a Peugeot strong young man.

Broad shoulders, slender legs, protruding chest muscles and arm muscles, shallow dimples, can be called a jade tree in the wind, and even the corners of the mouth have a hairy mustache. His personality is still so introverted and shy, and he blushes when he says a few words.

He stood beside his father with a military camouflage bag, and greeted me and Mr. Shen in a proper manner, calling Mr. Shen uncle and me sister.

Mr. Yichen listened to Mr. Shen tell me the ins and outs of the whole shooting incident, and after listening to it, he kept looking at me with his eyes.

I felt a little ashamed under his gaze. For the first time, I felt that this thing was a bit Meng Lang. I should have calmed down and come up with a more satisfactory solution.

Liang Xin, with a pair of warm single eyelid eyes, also followed his father to look at me incessantly.

I feel even more ashamed that I don't seem to be a good example for young people.

Mr. Yichen said: "What does it feel like to shoot at someone? It's a pleasure, isn't it? ”

I looked down and said, "I'm sorry, I know I did something wrong." ”

I argued, "I just want to teach him a lesson, let him know that it will not end well if he is so casual and malicious towards people." ”

Mr. Yichen said: "The moment you shoot, you know best in your heart whether you are protecting yourself or helping the other party. ”

I was speechless.

I said, "I'm not going to touch a shotgun again." ”

Mr. Yichen said: "This sentence is still what I see in your work: the target of shooting should be inside, not outside. ”

I looked at Mr. Shen.

He shrugged at me.

I looked at Liang Xin again.

Liang Xin smiled at me with adoration and understanding.

Again, I said, "Okay. I was wrong. The mistake is that knowledge and action cannot be united. As soon as the external test appears, the heart is still lost, and it still runs with the habit. ”

Some people just have the majesty of Mr. Yichen, he is like a bright mirror.

Standing in front of him, you can clearly see the shortcomings that you have deliberately hidden.

(b)

When I woke up the next morning, I heard the sound of axes and chisels chopping wood from outside the cabin.

I lazily draped my hair and pushed open the wooden window to see that it was Mr. Yichen and Liang Xin, two people wearing sweaters and vests, chopping firewood from the fireplace in the open space in the courtyard. The two men each held a long-handled axe, and they were swinging their arms up and down, and next to them was a hand-drawn double-handled long saw.

They had been working for a while, and had chopped out a small pile of firewood that had been washed down from the upper reaches the previous day and stacked it in a corner of the hallway in front of the house.

Now, father and son are chopping a sturdy oak tree.

I greeted them through the window. Mr. Yichen said: "There is brewed coffee in the hallway, and the milk is also warm. ”

I fastened my cotton dressing gown and sat down in the hallway, watching them chop wood while sipping the hanging ear coffee that Mr. Yichen had brought from the city.

Liang Xin seems to be familiar with this job. From the time he was very young, Yichen always took his son to chop firewood by himself as fuel for the home fireplace in winter.

Yichen's reasoning is that if a child has never chopped wood by himself, he will think that the warmth of winter comes from the artificial fireplace, not the generosity of the great forest.

I stepped down the hallway, leaned in, and took a closer look at the oak they were dealing with.

Judging by the growth rings, this oak tree was born in 1860. At that time, the United States was still in the midst of a civil war.

Oak trees are not common in this area and are only found in the vertical climate zone of the mountains near the town of Winter Lake. Oak trees are also not the favorite fireplace fuel of the locals. Compared to the birch trees that abound in the area, oak grows too slowly and has a low survival rate.

The bark of the oak tree is the favorite food of the starry hares in this area. In winter, when the crops in the fields are harvested, the grass dries up, and the fallen seeds are covered by deep snow and ice, the bark of the oak tree becomes the best choice for rabbits to spend the winter. Every winter, the bark of the oak tree is gnawed off by rabbits and circles until it sprouts and regenerates the following summer. Many oak trees have died because of this. For an oak tree to grow to heights beyond the reach of rabbits, it must take ten years or more.

Every oak tree that survived either grew in a very remote location that was out of the sight of rabbits, or happened to catch up with the growth of forest wolves and black bears in those years, and the rabbits were not numerous.

Perhaps one day, a patient botanist will come and study the growth patterns of the oak forests in this area and draw a curve of the growth rate of the oak trees.

This curve shows that oak trees have a peak of growth every 10 years, which corresponds to the lowest trough of the rabbit population.

I picked up a piece of oak wood that they had chopped, and found that both father and son were quite proud of their workmanship, and the edges of the firewood were straight and smooth, and to make a piece of wood so hard so neatly required not only arm strength, but also the skill of the axe.

I couldn't help but exclaim, "It's really a good job, just as good as the local uncles." ”

Mr. Yichen said: "I am not like you, the eldest lady was born, I was born in the countryside, and since I was a child, I have herded cattle, grass, and chopped firewood for the family, which is no different from the local uncles. ”

He pointed at Liang Xin and said, "I hope he can always maintain his true colors of manual labor and not become a big young master in the office." ”

(c)

As soon as the sun went down, the sky darkened instantly, and the temperature outside dropped rapidly.

Before dinner, the Liang father and son moved the chopped oak into the wooden house, set it up in the fireplace one by one, and lit it with a firelighter, and the red flame quickly brought warmth to the room.

Liang Xin and Katya came over again and lit the tin stove and began to boil water on the stove.

Mr. Yichen said to his son: "You see, in order to keep us warm at night, the forest has paid for hundreds of years of accumulated sunshine. Tonight, our body temperature is due to the sun and the forest. ”

"We have to know how to reciprocate," he said. ”

Liang Xin nodded vigorously.

He did remember what his father had taught him over the years. Liang Xin has always been an outstanding environmental protectionist, and in this life, he has been unremittingly engaged in environmental protection and public welfare, and has made great contributions to the promotion of environmental protection with his lens and personal behavior.

Liang Xin wrote in her diary that night: "Ten years ago, in this forest, there may have been thousands of oak seeds germinating, but only this one tree survived the rabbit's teeth. It has accumulated 100 years of sunlight, released in our fireplace, and turned into the body temperature and life of our whole family. Our lives and forests are one and have never been separated. ”

Later, Liang Xin's residence has also maintained the nostalgic facility of the fireplace. Every winter, he would also lead his son to split the firewood burned in the fireplace.

Liang Xin's pet cat has always firmly believed that Liang Xin is the magician of all warmth.

Every time Liang Xin woke up in the middle of the night, got out of the bed tremblingly, and walked to the living room to add firewood to the fireplace, his cat always flashed its big green eyes, standing still between Liang Xin and the stove, to watch Liang Xin perform his magic performance.

Liang Xin had to deign to lie on the floor, put the firewood between the cat's legs, put it in the fireplace, and put the igniter under the cat's tail to light the firewood.

With infinite admiration and adoration, the cat watched Liang Xin lie in front of it to complete this operation. Its persistent onlooker spirit can be called an earth-shattering ghostly spirit, which can redirect the river and make the mountains bow their heads.

The next morning, the weather warmed up, and the fireplace went out. The Liang father and son diligently swept away the ashes from the fireplace and sent the ashes to the camp's orchard to use as fertilizer for the trees.

In this way, this oak tree will become the crisp red apple of the next year, which will return to us and bring us the abundance and sweet warmth of life again.

Everything is so cyclical, disappearing again and again, coming back again and again, in different forms, supporting our life and becoming one with us.