Acid thorn ditch and Danxia

This Saturday, as usual, I participated in the outdoor activities of "exploring the ancient waves and Danxia, tasting sweet and sour thorns".

Starting from Wuwei, crossing the Dajingxia Reservoir in Gulang to the south, the first stop is Suanzigou Village, Dongdatan Township, Tianzhu.

Acid thorn ditch village, as its name implies, is named after how many acid thorns grow in the gully between two mountains. The village is at the mouth of the ditch, surrounded by mountains. Most households have moved out of the mountains with the national poverty alleviation and relocation project, leaving dozens of households to build new farmhouses in a unified way, which is quite beautiful. The original village can no longer see its original appearance, and it can only remain in the memory of this generation.

There is a river near the village called Suancigou River, which is surrounded by green barbed wire and marked with drinking water, which also shows that it is a first-class drinking water source.

There is a gravel road by the river, which is not very flat, and there are inevitably gullies and ridges. When we drove along this road and passed a herdsman's cattle and sheep pen ditch, a car behind us couldn't get through, so we had to stop, pack our bags and set off on foot.

Walking inside, the ancient trees on both sides of the ditch and at the bottom of the ditch are towering, with green eyes. It's just that some low shrubs in the forest at the foot of the mountain or beside the ditch have returned to their proper yellow. From a distance, they are like children's casual smearing, and green rushes to the top of the mountain to connect with the sky, giving people a sense of beauty to the horizon.

It can be seen from the exposure that the mountain is a sedimentary rock with a relatively complete sedimentary sequence. Some of them are deposited on the slopes of cliffs, like the rocks in Guan 'egou, which produce parallel folds layer by layer; Some strata cover the original rock, showing staggered texture. Rock has two colors, one is earth white and the other is rust red. Perhaps, with the change of time and environment, some rocks have become fossils due to weathering and rock erosion, water and ice. The original color of the river has changed, and it tends to be emerald and crystal clear. It happens that several cypress trees have been built on the river, which is a simple wooden bridge leading to the bottom of the rock. A friend named swordsman in the same trade said seriously, pointing to the rock:

"Look, it has turned into jade. Someone built a bridge to cross the river to collect it."

After listening to his words, I was so excited that I wanted to pick a few, but I just kept it in my heart and didn't want to say it. Seeing that no one meant it, I gave up.

Most rocks are covered with soil layers with uneven thickness, and natural trees such as Sabina vulgaris and Picea crassifolia, which are common in Qilian Mountain, grow on the soil layers, reaching high into the sky from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the ditch with an almost wanton randomness. The branches of the trees are staggered, and the needles are scattered like green clouds, which tightly covers the blue sky.

The soil layer is so thin that many roots are exposed and crisscross around the ground. Epiphytic moss is in a trance in the sun, with a green color delayed by time. It grows freely in the direction of time, and it can spread in wet places in the forest despite the invasion of ice and snow. This makes the originally dark forest full of vitality.

Everyone was infected by this distinctive personality and came to life. Brother Eagle still doesn't forget to sit on the warm moss bathed in sunshine, as if the most regretless youth time in his life is still flowing in his heart, smiling.

The path is on the hillside above the ditch, rugged and difficult to walk, hiding in the forest for a while and passing through the bushes for a while, so that everyone is covered in soil. Especially shrubs, are very annoying. They are everywhere, at the bottom of the ditch, beside the ditch, on the edge of the cliff and on the hillside, and many of them come out to get in the way, forcing us to bow our heads from time to time and avoid the past.

Most of these shrubs are acid thorns, azaleas and incense sticks. , are not too high, decadent in the yellow, lifeless. On the contrary, its branches are quite tough. When people meet them, needle-like thorns will quietly pierce the skin. Although it is not very painful, it is always alert and must be cautious. Especially special is the acid thorn tree. There are many acid thorns, and the steeper they are, the more they appear, supporting almost half of the shrubs.

Acacia trees generally grow in clusters, like a bunch of messy branches tied up after smoothing from the bottom, with the roots below next to each other and the branches above stretching freely like stretching. Not very high, only about 1.5 meters. Compared with Sabina vulgaris, it is not worth mentioning, but it is completely superior in the bushes.

The mountain breeze in winter is still very cold, whistling through our faces, and our faces are a little painful. The sour thorn gradually lost its beautiful coat under the care of the mountain wind, and the red leaves fell with the wind, leaving only the thorn on the red branch, still revealing its sharpness and extending to the boundless world.

The sour thorn in the forest seems to be left alone, afraid of losing it, snuggling on the thick branches of juniper, once or twice, hugging tightly. Like a bride wearing a red veil, smiling. Also like "Miss Rich", it followed closely.

Supposedly, the sour thorn branches at this time should be covered with orange or orange round sour thorn fruits, dotted in the valley, but there was no sound, and no fruit was seen, so that the eagle brother suspected the sour thorn tree and could not help but ask:

"Is it a sour thorn tree with thorns in Changsha?"

I am very confident about this and firmly say:

"Absolutely. I came here the year before last. At that time, these acid thorn trees had small flowers, and some of them had small round green fruits. We also said that we will pick it when it is red in winter! "

After that, I looked at a sour thorn tree with no results, and I secretly doubted it, thinking that I must find it when I find an opportunity.

A small river winds its way from the ravine under our feet to the outside of the mountain. Many Sabina vulgaris or shrubs in the ravine are cared for by water, which is more vibrant and moist than similar plants on the hillside. But it has condensed into ice and shuttled through the forest, flying like a silver belt in the valley. Sunlight shone on the ice through the treetops, shining all the way and beautifying the valley.

There is also a lot of ice on the path, so let's stop from time to time. Fortunately, a friend named Brother Long brought crampons to help us through several times. Later, the ice was a little steep, so we had to stop and choose a sunny hillside for dinner and rest.

There is an abandoned adobe house on the hillside, and there is a kang, which can burn cow dung and has collapsed. In the corner of the room, there is a big water tank, a simple kerosene lamp is hung on the wall, and the plastic sheet covered on the window has opened a big mouth. Obviously, this used to be the temporary residence of shepherds, and it has been abandoned for a long time. Brother ying lived in the mountains when he was a child and had feelings for these. He quipped:

"Come on, let's go to my room."

Everyone went to the house, looked at it, and then went back to the hillside. However, from the abandoned houses in front of us and the hillside with few cattle and sheep along the way, we can feel all the efforts made by the state and local people to keep Qilian Mountain green.

After dinner, we went back the same way. After leaving the ditch, I drove about 5 kilometers and passed a place called Suancigou Village. However, this sour thorn ditch is no longer Tianzhu, but a mountain village in Gulang Liang Heng Township.

Obviously, two villages with the same name, located on the hillside, come down in one continuous line, * * * leaning against a mountain, drinking the same river, walking the same road, moving the same immigrants and owning the same new rural houses. The difference is that the mountains on this side of Gulang are bare and a lot of land has been reclaimed.

I remember that the writer Xue Mo also mentioned something about the Gulang sour thorn ditch in the interview. He said:

"When I was a child, my father often talked about the acid thorn ditch of the ancient waves. Father is a warm-hearted man. He always thinks of his home there. Acid thorn ditch is very poor, but before my grandparents' generation, acid thorn ditch was also very rich. It used to be a forest. You think, where there are forests to grow, there must be no shortage of water. It is said that some people in our country went to Suanjigou to beg for food, but later Suanjigou opened a mountain to cultivate land, cut down trees indiscriminately, the mountains were bald, the grass was bare, and the climate was dry, leaving only a name for the land. "

Passing through Gulang Suanjigou Village is quite heavy, leaving only famous children. On Tianzhu side, Tibetans living there believe in animism. They believe that there are mountain gods, water gods and tree gods, and Tibetan culture that respects nature protects that mountain. On the Gulang side, time is silent, but the fact gives the answer: if a cultural mistake offends the forest, it is inevitable for Tongshan Zhai to do so.

Not far from Suanzigou Village in Gulang, Chibi on the north side of the highway attracted our attention. Driving under the cliff, the ancient waves and Danxia inadvertently appeared in front of us. ...

Danxia is distributed in Konglongshan, Gulang County. There are many differentiated caves on the top of the mountain, which are round and look down on all beings like the eyes of the mountain, hence the name Kong Long.

Danxia here has its own unique color. It looks like it was painted orange and purple for several kilometers until it was near the dam of Dajingxia Reservoir. Brother Long came and said that there is a road in the direction, which is far away and takes dozens of kilometers.

The rocks on the mountain have different shapes. Eagle pointed to a stone and said it was like a lighthouse on the sea. I looked at it carefully for a long time, but I didn't see why. This is a stone with a face. The nose, eyes and mouth are all quite complete. I agree. It's really similar.

These lifelike shapes fascinate us, so we discuss going in to have a look. But time is limited, so I have to have a look, leaving a lot of regrets, hoping to make up for it next time.