分类 必应美图 下的文章

吉野山，日本奈良 Mount Yoshino, Nara Prefecture, Japan (© Sean Pavone/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

The mountain of 30,000 sakura

Mount Yoshino ranks as one of the best places in Japan to immerse yourself in the spring cherry blossom season. Over 30,000 flowering Japanese cherry trees, or sakura, grow in four main groves on the hillside. Because the trees, some planted over 1,300 years ago, grow at different elevations, the cherry blossom front gradually moves up the mountain in a slow, fragrant wave as the season progresses. Peak bloom usually arrives between early and mid-April. Most years, crowds wander through the town of Yoshino, visiting its traditional temples and shires, before admiring the profusion of cherry blossoms, a custom known as hanami. Of course, we can practice hanami virtually with pictures. But if you're lucky enough to have a blooming cherry tree near you, we encourage you to pause and breathe the moment in.

樱花山

吉野山是日本最适合在春天樱花盛开的地方之一。在山坡上的四个主要小树林里，生长着3万多株开花的日本樱花树。因为这些树，有些是1300多年前种植的，生长在不同的海拔高度，樱花阵面随着季节的推移，以缓慢而芬芳的波浪向山上逐渐移动。开花高峰期通常在4月初至中旬之间。大多数年，人们在吉野镇漫步，参观传统的寺庙和山寨，然后欣赏樱花盛开的景象，这是一种被称为花美的习俗。当然，我们可以用图片来练习花美。但如果你有幸在你身边有一棵盛开的樱花树，我们鼓励你停下来呼吸一下。

Hovenweep国家纪念碑的方塔，犹他州 Square Tower Group in Hovenweep National Monument, Utah (© Brad McGinley Photography/Getty Images)

A timeless view of the night sky

The bright sweep of the Milky Way is especially vivid amid the mesas, canyons, and prehistoric towers of Hovenweep National Monument. Straddling the southern Colorado-Utah border, Hovenweep is so remote that almost no artificial light disturbs the view of star-filled skies. The dazzling nightscapes are little different from those seen by the Ancestral Puebloans who built these towers. They were a farming culture who first settled in the area roughly 1,100 years ago. By the late 1200s they numbered around 2,500 people and had built these and other structures in six different villages. Archaeologists offer several theories to explain the use of the buildings. Some may have been defensive fortifications, storage areas, homes, or any combination of these. But researchers suggest that the tower called Hovenweep Castle, seen here, was almost certainly used as a celestial observatory.

That's why we're visiting Hovenweep during International Dark Sky Week, which lasts through the weekend. Organizers of the event, held during the week of the new moon in April, encourage us to observe the beauty of the night sky without light pollution. It's easy to do here—in 2014, the International Dark Sky Association named Hovenweep a Dark Sky Park, offering protections that preserve the extraordinarily pristine skies that once shone down on the Ancestral Puebloans.

永恒的夜空

在霍文韦普国家纪念碑的台地、峡谷和史前塔楼中，银河系的明亮一扫显得尤为生动。横跨科罗拉多州和犹他州的南部边界，霍文韦普非常偏远，几乎没有人造光干扰满天星空的景象。令人眼花缭乱的夜景与建造这些塔的普埃布劳恩斯祖先所看到的几乎没有什么不同。他们是一种农业文化，大约1100年前第一次在这个地区定居。到12世纪末，他们大约有2500人，在六个不同的村庄建造了这些和其他建筑。考古学家提供了几种理论来解释这些建筑的用途。有些可能是防御工事、储存区、住宅，或这些的任何组合。但研究人员认为，在这里看到的这座名为霍文韦普城堡的塔几乎肯定是用作天文观测站的。

这就是为什么我们要在国际黑暗天空周期间参观霍文韦普，这一周将持续到整个周末。这项活动的组织者在四月的新月周举行，鼓励我们在没有光污染的情况下观察美丽的夜空。2014年，在这里很容易做到，国际黑暗天空协会将霍文韦普命名为一个黑暗天空公园，提供保护，保护曾经照耀在普韦布洛祖先身上的异常原始的天空。

雅典卫城的帕特农神庙，希腊 The Parthenon temple in the Acropolis of Athens, Greece (© Lucky-photographer/Shutterstock)

On the rebirth of the Olympic Games

Today marks the 125th anniversary of the first modern Olympic games, held in Athens in 1896—1,500 years after they were banned by the Roman Emperor. (The original games were held at least as far back as 776 BCE and probably earlier.) The 1896 games were held in the Panathenaic Stadium, in the shadow of the Acropolis of Athens, shown here. Those newly revived games of 1896 included athletes from 14 countries, with the largest delegations from Greece, Germany, France, and Great Britain. The 43 events included a marathon, tennis, cycling, fencing, shooting, Greco-Roman wrestling, and swimming. And while some things haven't changed over the years, some were pretty different back then. Swimmers were taken out to sea by boat for the longer races and had to swim back to shore. Winners were given a silver medal (copper for second place), as well as an olive branch and a diploma.

This is a unique time for the Olympics. We can look forward to the postponed 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo (now scheduled to start in July 2021) as well as the Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. The Beijing games will feature a mascot panda named Bing Dwen Dwen. 'Bing' means ice and symbolizes purity and strength, and 'Dwen Dwen' represents children. After the postponement of 2020, we can't wait to hear, 'Let the games begin!'

论奥运会的重生

今天是第一届现代奥林匹克运动会125周年纪念日，1896-1500年雅典奥运会被罗马皇帝禁止举办。（最初的奥运会至少在公元前776年举行，可能更早）1896年的奥运会在雅典卫城阴影下的泛雅典体育场举行，如图所示。新恢复的1896年奥运会包括14个国家的运动员，其中最大的代表团来自希腊、德国、法国和英国。这43个项目包括马拉松、网球、自行车、击剑、射击、古典式摔跤和游泳。虽然有些事情多年来没有改变，但有些事情在那时候却大不相同。游泳者被划船带出海参加更长时间的比赛，不得不游回岸边。获胜者获得银牌（铜牌获得第二名），以及橄榄枝和文凭。

这是一个独特的时间为奥运会。我们可以期待推迟的2020年东京奥运会和残奥会（现在计划于2021年7月开始）以及2022年北京冬奥会。北京奥运会将有一只名叫宾·德温的吉祥物熊猫“冰”的意思是冰，象征纯洁和力量，“德文德文”代表儿童。在2020年推迟之后，我们迫不及待地想听到，‘让奥运会开始吧！’

Areuse峡谷的Saut du Brot石桥，瑞士纳沙泰尔 Saut du Brot stone bridge in the Areuse Gorge, Neuchâtel, Switzerland (© Andreas Gerth/eStock Photo)

Once upon a time there was a bridge…

Although this stone bridge, known as Saut de Brot, looks right out of a fairy tale, it serves a very practical purpose. It connects walking trails on each side of the Areuse Gorge, offering safe passage to hikers exploring the lush Brot-Dessous area in eastern Switzerland, a predominantly French-speaking region of this multilingual country. It's not known when the bridge was built exactly, though it's thought to be a recent construction. But if that's true, how do we not know who built it? All this mystery leads us to suspect it's the work of helpful gnomes and fairies living deep in the Swiss woods.

从前有一座桥…

尽管这座被称为索特德布罗特（Saut de Brot）的石桥看起来就像童话故事，但它有着非常实际的用途。它连接阿瑞斯峡谷两侧的步行道，为徒步旅行者探索瑞士东部郁郁葱葱的布罗特-德索斯地区提供安全通道，这是一个多语种国家的主要法语地区。虽然这座桥被认为是最近才建造的，但不知道它到底是什么时候建造的。但如果这是真的，我们怎么不知道是谁建的呢？所有这些谜团让我们怀疑这是生活在瑞士森林深处的有益的侏儒和仙女的作品。

【今日清明】（ © yangphoto ）

阿尼瓦角的灯塔，俄罗斯萨哈林岛 Lighthouse at Cape Aniva, Sakhalin Island, Russia (© Amazing Aerial Agency/Offset by Shutterstock)

A light at the edge of the world

Seemingly against all odds, the Aniva Lighthouse stands atop this rocky outcrop where it once lit the way for vessels navigating the fierce currents, hidden rocks, and frequent fogs of Cape Aniva on the island of Sakhalin. Russia's largest island, Sakhalin lies off the mainland's Far East coast, due north of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. The island was hotly contested by both Russia and Japan in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the late 1930s, when the Aniva Lighthouse was built, Russia controlled the northern half of Sakhalin while...

世界边缘的一盏灯

阿尼瓦灯塔似乎与所有的可能性背道而驰，它矗立在这块岩石露头之上，曾经为船只在萨哈林岛上的阿尼瓦角激流、暗礁和频繁的浓雾中航行照亮了道路。萨哈林岛是俄罗斯最大的岛屿，位于大陆远东海岸，日本北海道岛正北。在19世纪和20世纪初，这个岛屿受到俄罗斯和日本的激烈争夺。上世纪30年代末，阿尼瓦灯塔建成后，俄罗斯控制了萨哈林岛的北半部，而。。。

伦索伊斯马拉年塞斯国家公园，巴西巴雷里尼亚斯市 Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in Barreirinhas, Brazil (© WIN-Initiative/Getty Images)

White dunes, blue lagoons

From the air, the mesmerizing tapestry of sandy dunes and lagoons you see here gives Lençóis Maranhenses National Park an otherworldly, desert-like appearance. Located in the sparsely populated Northeast corner of Brazil, this park gets far too much annual rainfall—nearly 50 inches—to be considered a desert. In fact, heavy rain is part of what makes this place unique: Nearly 70% of its annual rainfall comes between January and May, filling the park's nearly 40,000 lagoons to the brim with fresh rainwater. Why doesn't the water sink into the sand? A layer of impermeable bedrock beneath the dunes prevents that from happening.

Despite its remote location, the park, established in 1981, has become a popular destination for ecotourists. They come partly to see the many kinds of animals and plants that manage to thrive here, including several endangered species. One of the park's most famous inhabitants is the predatory Atlantic wolffish, which lies dormant during the dry season by burying itself into the layers of wet mud in the lagoons, only to reemerge to snack on unsuspecting prey as the pools refill with the rains.

白色沙丘，蓝色泻湖

从空中看，这里迷人的沙丘和泻湖挂毯给了伦索斯马兰森斯国家公园一个超凡脱俗的沙漠般的外观。这个公园位于巴西人口稀少的东北角，年降雨量高达近50英寸，不算沙漠。事实上，暴雨是这个地方独特之处的一部分：每年近70%的降雨量来自1月至5月，公园近4万个泻湖被新鲜雨水填满。为什么水不沉进沙子里？沙丘下面的一层不透水的基岩阻止了这种情况的发生。

尽管地理位置偏远，但这座建于1981年的公园已成为生态旅游者的热门目的地。他们来这里的部分原因是看到许多种类的动植物在这里繁衍生息，包括一些濒临灭绝的物种。该公园最著名的居民之一是捕食性的大西洋狼鱼，它在旱季蛰伏在泻湖的湿泥层中，结果又重新出现，在雨水不断涌入的池塘中捕食毫无防备的猎物。

拉贾安帕特群岛中的瓦亚格岛，印度尼西亚 Wayag Island at Raja Ampat, Indonesia (© Amazing Aerial Agency/Offset by Shutterstock)

Paradise, found

If your dream is to experience a tropical paradise that's still largely untouched by people, you could do worse than a trip to Wayag Island, seen here. It's part of the Raja Ampat district in the province of West Papua, Indonesia. Most of the roughly 50,000 inhabitants of this district live on or around its four main islands, Batanta, Misool, Salawati and Waigeo. The remainder of Raja Ampat is made up of roughly 1,500 smaller islands, cays, and shoals–astonishingly, hundreds of these tiny islands have yet to be explored by humans.

Divers and snorkelers, especially, treasure Raja Ampat and its vast and diverse reef system, which is considered one of the most biodiverse places in the world. Located roughly seven miles above the equator, Raja Ampat covers nearly 10 million acres of land and sea, and is home to 540 types of corals, more than 1,000 types of coral reef fish, 700 types of mollusks, and a variety of warm-blooded marine animals like the dugong. The ecosystem, which is part of a larger tropical ocean area called the Coral Triangle, is so diverse it's sometimes referred to as the 'the Amazon of the seas.'

天堂，找到了

如果你的梦想是去体验一个热带天堂，那里基本上还没有被人接触过，你可能会比去瓦亚格岛旅行更糟糕，如图所示。它是印度尼西亚西巴布亚省拉贾安帕特区的一部分。这个地区大约5万居民中的大多数居住在巴坦塔岛、米苏尔岛、萨拉瓦蒂岛和怀吉岛四个主要岛屿上或附近。拉贾安帕特的其余部分由大约1500个较小的岛屿、珊瑚礁和浅滩组成——令人惊讶的是，数百个这些小岛还没有被人类探索过。

潜水员和潜水者，尤其是珍宝拉贾安帕特及其广阔多样的珊瑚礁系统，被认为是世界上生物多样性最丰富的地方之一。Raja Ampat位于赤道上方约7英里处，占地近1000万英亩，是540种珊瑚、1000多种珊瑚礁鱼类、700多种软体动物以及儒艮等多种温血海洋动物的家园。这个生态系统是一个被称为珊瑚三角洲的更大的热带海洋区域的一部分，其多样性使它有时被称为“海洋亚马逊”

黑沙滩上Reynisdrangar的玄武岩，冰岛 The basalt rock formations of Reynisdrangar on Reynisfjara Beach, Iceland (© Cavan Images/Getty Images)

Rising up from the black sand like rock gods

Any visitor to Iceland knows that driving the Ring Road rewards one with incredible changing landscapes. Today, we're taking a quick detour to visit this chiseled stretch of Iceland's southern coast, where black sand beaches meet spiky basalt sea stacks. This is Reynisfjara Beach, widely considered the most beautiful example of Iceland's black sand beaches. The sea stacks fronting the beach are known as Reynisdrangar and were formed when a volcano erupted, spewing flowing lava that cooled into these formations. Ask the locals how they formed, however, and you may get a different story, one involving trolls and a battle with a three-masted ship.

像岩石神一样从黑沙中升起

任何一个到冰岛的游客都知道，驾驶环城公路的人都会得到令人难以置信的景观变化的回报。今天，我们要绕道去参观冰岛南部海岸的这片轮廓分明的地带，那里的黑色沙滩与尖尖的玄武岩海交汇。这就是雷尼斯菲亚拉海滩，被广泛认为是冰岛黑沙滩最美丽的例子。海滩前面的海堆被称为雷诺斯德兰格，是火山喷发时形成的，喷发出的熔岩冷却成这些地层。然而，问问当地人他们是如何形成的，你可能会得到一个不同的故事，一个涉及巨魔和一艘三桅船的战斗。

斯诺登山与兰贝里斯山口，英国史诺多尼亚国家公园 Mount Snowdon and the Llanberis Pass in Snowdonia National Park, North Wales, United Kingdom (© Alan Novelli/Alamy)

A chiselled landscape

This dramatic view brings together two Welsh icons. In the distance sits the country’s highest mountain, Snowdon, while the towering walls of slate in the foreground nod to an industry which has reshaped the landscape here over the centuries. This is the former Dinorwic quarry in the county of Gwynedd, once the second-largest slate quarry in the world after nearby Penrhyn. Slate was first extracted here by the Romans but the process really gathered steam during the industrial revolution, when it became known as the industry that ‘roofed the world’.

At its height in the late 19th century, thousands of men were employed at Dinorwic and the Welsh slate industry as a whole extracted about 485,000 tonnes a year. Slate quarrying chiselled its way into the landscape and communities grew up around it. But in 1969, Dinorwic closed, a victim of falling demand and cheaper imports. Now Dinorwic is home to the National Slate Museum of Wales, thanks in part to the efforts of the quarry’s former chief engineer, Hugh Richard Jones, who saved the 51ft (15.4m)-wide waterwheel and other equipment from being sold off.

Welsh slate has a worldwide reputation for quality and was used in the construction of Westminster Hall in London, Copenhagen City Hall and the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, Australia. An important part of Welsh industrial and cultural heritage, this slate landscape has been nominated by the UK government for Unesco World Heritage status.

轮廓分明的风景

这一戏剧性的景象汇集了两个威尔士图标。远处坐落着该国最高的山峰斯诺登，而前景中高耸的石板墙表明，几个世纪以来，这一行业重塑了这里的景观。这是格温内德县的前迪诺维奇采石场，曾经是仅次于附近的彭恩的世界第二大板岩采石场。石板最早是罗马人在这里开采的，但在工业革命期间，这一过程真的积聚了蒸汽，当时它被称为“给世界盖屋顶”的工业。

在19世纪末的鼎盛时期，成千上万的人受雇于迪诺维奇，整个威尔士板岩行业每年开采约48.5万吨。石板采石逐渐进入了风景区，周围的社区也随之发展起来。但在1969年，Dinorwic关闭了，成为需求下降和进口价格下降的受害者。如今，迪诺维奇是威尔士国家石板博物馆的所在地，这在一定程度上要归功于采石场前总工程师休·理查德·琼斯（Hugh Richard Jones）的努力，他挽救了这座51英尺（15.4米）宽的水车和其他设备，使其免遭抛售。

威尔士板岩的质量在世界范围内享有盛誉，曾用于伦敦威斯敏斯特大厅、哥本哈根市政厅和澳大利亚墨尔本皇家展览大楼的建设。作为威尔士工业和文化遗产的重要组成部分，这块石板景观已被英国政府提名为联合国教科文组织世界遗产。