Coach: Coaching the Grizzlies at the beginning, playing the bantam

The glass curtain wall of the bird-watching house was covered with water droplets, and Hannah drew a migration route map with her fingers.

Lu Yong’s tablet computer displayed a satellite image of the wetlands, with the red dots representing the cranes dangerously intersecting with the blue line of the oil pipeline.

"They stopped at Panjin Wetland last year." He zoomed in on a certain coordinate, and Hannah suddenly pressed the screen: "That's the mudflat where we picked clams!"

On the damp window glass, the two people's fingerprints overlapped on the virtual migratory bird route.

The midday sun brought up the humusy smell of the swamp, and they followed the ranger in a camouflage hat into the closed area.

As the rubber boat crushed the duckweed, Hannah's sun hat was hooked by the reeds and fell on the abandoned oil pump base.

When Lu Yong used the oar to hook his hat back, he discovered that there were two wild peonies growing in the cracks of the rusty iron, and their bright red petals were stained with black oil.

"More stubborn than the silk flower specimens in the museum." Hannah pinned the flower behind her ear, completely unaware that her hair was tangled with reed fluff.

Deep in the reed maze, the ranger suddenly turned off the engine.

A slight popping sound came from underwater. Hannah thought it was methane bubbles, but she saw Lu Yong taking out a water quality test pen with a serious expression.

"The pH value is normal." The moment he turned on the screen, a school of dark blue carp suddenly jumped out of the water, and the mud spots splashed by their tail fins painted abstract pictures on their life jackets.

Hannah stretched out her hand to touch the nearest ripple, but her fingertips caught half of a red-crowned crane's primary flight feather. The black substance solidified in the feather tube was unclear whether it was crude oil or a blood clot.

In the ecological monitoring station, Hannah stared at the diatom samples under the microscope.

Lu Yong was checking data with the technician on duty when he heard her suddenly slam the table and say, "Does this diamond-shaped diatom look like the glutinous rice lattice cakes in Panjin Snack Street?"

The technician took a closer look and said with a smile, "This is a species of the genus Pinnata, endemic to the Daqing wetland."

Hannah secretly took a microscopic image with her mobile phone, planning to compare it with photos of the rice cakes at dinner.

The wooden observation tower creaked in the evening, Hannah counted the herons returning to their nests, and Lu Yong's laser pen drew an invisible longitude and latitude grid in the twilight.

When the last rays of sunset penetrated the gas pipeline, she suddenly pointed to the southeast: "Look at that moving black dot!" In the night vision telescope, the poacher's motorboat was startling the night heron. Lu Yong's mobile phone GPS had been synchronized to the patrol station. Hannah's hand holding the walkie-talkie was shaking slightly, and the iron man badge on her wrist was glowing coldly in the afterglow.

When the moonlight first appeared, they lay on the inflatable cushion of the observatory and waited for meteors. Hannah's fingertips stroked the voiceprint map downloaded during the day: "The call of the bearded gull has 32 variations, which is more complex than the intonation of Daqing dialect." Lu Yong raised the recorder to the night sky, and the cry of cranes suddenly burst out in the glow of the Milky Way. When she turned over, she spilled ginger tea, and the brown liquid spread on the map like capillaries in the wetland.

The dew in the late night wet the observation log. Hannah used the ranger's charcoal pencil to sketch in the blank space: at the junction of the oil pipeline and the wings of migratory birds, she was standing on tiptoe to hang a wishing sign. Lu Yong's notebook was spread out next to him, and the formula suddenly turned into a sloppy handwriting at a certain point - "The ecological compensation coefficient should include the memory weight of migratory birds." They didn't realize that each other's drafts formed a complete metaphor in the morning light.

When the announcement of the park's closing was made the next day, Hannah was kneeling in front of the rubbing table in the science museum. She used a reed stem to dip into crude oil instead of ink and made a rubbing of a red-crowned crane's footprint on rice paper. Lu Yong's shirt cuff accidentally rubbed against the wet print, and the black lines have since been parasitic on the salt stains brought from Panjin. When the administrator turned off the main power switch, the emergency lights suddenly lit up, and the shadows of the two were cast on the wetland profile model, as if they had become new deposits between the oil layer and the saprophyte layer.

The air conditioning on the return bus blew away the reed fluff in Hannah's hair. When Lu Yong picked them up, he found a V-shaped red spot on the back of her neck from the sunburn - the shape of the eyepiece of the bird-watching telescope. The Bluetooth headset they shared played the cry of cranes in a loop, and a high-frequency sound segment reminded Hannah of the holographic projection of the Iron Man Memorial Hall. When the car passed the speed limit sign that read "Beware of Migratory Birds", she suddenly pressed her forehead against the window glass: "Next spring, will they return to Panjin with the smell of Daqing's crude oil?" Lu Yong did not answer, but folded the water quality test data of the two into paper cranes.

The dryer in the hotel laundry room roared and sizzled, while Hannah's rubbings were curled up in the compartment of the suitcase. When Lu Yong used a cotton swab to clean the camera lens, he found a photo he had taken by mistake: under the wetland sky before the rainstorm, his back was bent over to tie his shoelaces, and the worker who was repairing the pipeline a kilometer away was bent over the sky and earth at the same angle. He set the photo as an encrypted screen saver, and the password was the name of the 33rd snack they had tasted in Panjin.

The emergency light suddenly came on late at night, and Hannah woke up to see Lu Yong standing in front of the window.

The searchlight of the wetland night patrol team pierced the darkness, briefly illuminating the feather specimen in his hand - the soundprint map downloaded during the day was folded into an airplane, carrying the oil-stained crane feather and parked on the windowsill.

None of them spoke until the sky in the east turned crab-shell blue and the whistle of the early oil tanker startled the solidified darkness in the quill.

.........

The sand dunes of Yinsha Bay shone with metallic luster in the morning light. Hannah squatted down and grabbed a handful of sand. A dark red agate suddenly rolled out from between the fine quartz particles. "It's volcanic rock debris." Lu Yong's fingertips stroked the cross-section of the stone. The scenic map that was curled in the dryer last night slipped out of his backpack and just covered the reflective mark of the oil pipeline on the sand.

When the scenic area's battery car passed through the sand-proof forest, the startled sand larks hit the windshield. Hannah's sun hat was blown up by the airflow, and the strap hooked on the emergency hammer bracket by the car window. "As reckless as the red-crowned cranes in Panjin." She reached out to grab her hat, causing the Iron Man badge on her wrist to slide into her sleeve, and the coolness of the metal made her shrink her neck.

The simulated starry sky dome of the desert experience hall was still being debugged. Hannah kicked the simulated camel grass when she stepped into the exhibition hall in the dark. The moment the holographic projection suddenly lit up, she stumbled into Lu Yong's arms, and their overlapping shadows fell on the restored model of the ancient river channel. "This is the old course of the Nenjiang River," the guide's laser pen swept across the sand table, "The sand in Yinsha Bay actually came from the riverbed three thousand years ago."

In front of the wind erosion test bench, Hannah adjusted the wind speed to level 5. The artificial sandstorm roared towards the miniature poplars in the glass cover, and Lu Yong's tablet suddenly popped up a geological warning - the real-time data and the exhibition hall model formed a strange resonance. When the last leaf of the poplar was torn apart by the wind, Hannah suddenly turned off the switch, and the sound of sand falling was mixed with her rapid breathing: "It's more fierce than the wind in Daqing."

The sand at noon was hot enough to fry an egg, but Hannah insisted on trying sand therapy. She buried herself in the hot black jade sand, and the salt grains on the ends of her hair precipitated crystals in the high temperature. Lu Yong squatted beside her holding a thermometer, and the dial pointer trembled at the critical value: "I will be dehydrated in ten minutes." Before he finished speaking, the sand pile suddenly collapsed - the vibration of the underground water pipeline awakened the dormant sand lizards, and the gravel brought out by Hannah when she jumped drew a golden arc in the air. Outside the glass curtain wall of the Desert Oasis Restaurant, the photovoltaic panel array was flipping its angle in the midday sun. Hannah poked the poplar leaf decoration on the camel milk pudding: "It tastes like the reed roots in Longfeng Wetland." Lu Yong's fork was suspended in the air, and his attention was attracted by the wonders outside the window: the moment the sprinkler system was activated, the time-lapse effect of seven drought-resistant plants blooming in succession, like a fast-forwarded ecological restoration documentary.

In the VR experience area remodeled from the Xixia Underground Palace, Hannah's head-mounted display suddenly froze. The ruins of the ancient desert city that should have appeared turned into garbled characters. When she took off the device, she found that the walls in the real world were leaking water - the condenser pipe on the roof was broken. Lu Yong rolled the scenic spot manual into a funnel to divert the water. After the yellowed pages were soaked with water, they actually revealed the satellite map of Yinsha Bay ten years ago.

The off-road vehicle surfing project at dusk made Hannah hold the safety bar tightly, and the cold air on the shady side of the sand dune and the heat waves on the sunny side alternately hit her cheeks. When the vehicle jumped to the highest point, she suddenly let go of her hands: "Look at that!" In the afterglow of the sunset, the oil derrick and the photovoltaic power station were in the same frame, and the edges of steel and glass were polished by sand. Lu Yong's waterproof camera automatically took pictures continuously, and later on, there was a grain of sand stuck in the lens of the photos, which became the eternal golden noise in all the pictures.

Hannah tossed and turned in the starry sky tent at night. The moment she opened the curtain, the Milky Way was hanging down between the curves of the sand dunes. Lu Yong's laser pen suddenly lit up behind him, and the green light connected Antares in Scorpio: "The direction of the ancient river channel coincides with the meridian of the star map." She looked along the light spot and found that the lights of the sand control station in the distance just filled the belt of Orion.

The early morning sandstorm warning came suddenly, and Hannah was sorting specimen boxes under the emergency light. When Lu Yong used tape to reinforce the tent, he accidentally tore the interlayer waterproof membrane - the remaining pages of the 2008 "Yinshawan Sand Control Log" fell, and the yellowed pen words recorded the survival history of a certain Haloxylon ammodendron seedling. The two read to the end and found that the observation date was Hannah's lunar birthday.

When the wind and sand stopped, Hannah's scarf was already full of sand, heavy like a sandbag. Lu Yong used a brush to clean his SLR camera, and the sand embedded in the CMOS sensor reminded him of the salt crystals on Panjin Beach. When the first ray of morning light pierced through the clouds, they both discovered that new green had emerged from the folds of the sand dunes - the storm last night had brought seeds of unknown plants.

In the last hour before the return trip, Hannah squatted in the ecological restoration display area and was reluctant to leave. Her finger hovered over the touch screen, comparing the bare sand in 2005 with the grass grid at the moment, and suddenly grabbed the sand and put it into the empty medicine bottle.

Lu Yong pretended not to see her stuffing sea buckthorn berries into her boots, and just silently transferred the remaining drinking water into a more portable soft bag.

When the bus started, Hannah's specimen box suddenly popped open, and sand mixed with the smell of petroleum poured out, forming miniature sand dunes in the aisle.

When Lu Yong bent down to clean up, the sand on the back of her neck sparkled in the sunlight, like the Panjin salt crystals on her shirt on her first day in Daqing.

The car TV suddenly played a promotional video for Yinsha Bay. The camera swept across the tent where they stayed last night. At the edge of the screen, a shirt hanging out to dry was dancing in the wind - it was Lu Yong's plaid shirt stained with the smell of crude oil from Longfeng Wetland.

At the sink in the highway service area, Hannah turned on the faucet to rinse off the sand.

The moment the water broke through her fingers, she suddenly froze - the dark red sand embedded in the lines of her palms were oozing with traces of rust, exactly the same patina as the badge at the Iron Man Memorial.

Staying overnight in the new motel, Hannah soaked sea buckthorn berries in a glass.

As the dark red fruits floated up and down, Lu Yong was using his mobile phone to scan the agate stone he had picked up during the day.

When the identification result popped up "oil-bearing sandstone", the two looked up at the same time - suddenly there was the roar of a tanker truck passing by outside the window, causing ripples on the water surface in the cup, and the flesh spun out the same spiral patterns as the sand dunes of Yinsha Bay.

.........

When I woke up, the autumn sun dyed the reed marshes into molten gold. As soon as Hannah's canvas shoes stepped onto the wooden plank road of Garidi, the startled herons raised a wave of gilded water.

Lu Yong stretched out his hand to block the slanting reeds for her. The light that leaked through his fingers danced on the lapels of both of them. The silver-gray outline of the oil pipeline in the distance was distorted in the heat wave, like the strings of a harp suspended between heaven and earth.

When wetland ranger Lao Wu rowed his iron boat to the shore, the bow of the boat smashed the oil rainbow on the water. "This month is the time for migratory birds to transit," he threw two orange life jackets, the whitened cuffs showing traces of motor oil, "the white spoonbills from Siberia love to preen their feathers near the pumping station." Before he finished speaking, three black-winged stilts flew over the rusty gantry crane, the steel and flying feathers frozen into silhouettes in the backlight.

The sound of a diesel engine came from deep in the reed maze. The moment Hannah clenched the edge of the boat, the startled flock of spot-billed ducks were like dots of ink splashing into the sky. Lu Yong suddenly pulled her over, and the drone passed by, brushing the ends of her hair. The propeller airflow tore a channel through the reeds. "It's an oil pipeline inspection machine," Old Wu turned off the engine. "This thing scares birds more than a poacher's slingshot."

The observation tower was as hot as a branding iron at noon. When Hannah counted the 76th sandpiper, Lu Yong's telescope suddenly turned to the southeast. In the shadow under the oil pipeline support, two people in jumpsuits were casting nets on the water. The green fishing nets and the floating oil mixed into a greasy vortex. "They are temporary workers who are fishing for oil leaks from the pipeline," Old Wu took out his walkie-talkie, "but they always catch some fish and shrimp."

Hannah's mineral water bottle suddenly slipped out of her hand and fell from the tower. When the bottle cap popped off, a flock of migrating terns mistook it for an exploding silverfish. The cyclone formed by hundreds of birds swooping down actually rolled up the fishing net that was drifting towards the pipeline. In the picture captured by Lu Yong, the shadow of the grid was covering the worker's face that was raised in fear, like a cage suddenly dropped by fate.

Old Wu's oar stirred the humus and bubbles of methane appeared. Hannah reached out to pop a bubble, but was pulled back to her seat by Lu Yong. A whirlpool with a diameter of two meters suddenly appeared on the water surface ahead, and floating reeds were arranged radially at strange angles. "It's a microleak in the underground oil pipeline," Old Wu poked the tip of his oar tentatively at the center of the whirlpool, "Methane mixed with crude oil can spray three meters high when ignited."

As the sunset coated the oil pipeline with red copper, they found a stranded model of an oil tree. This twenty-year-old training device was half-sunk in the swamp, and the Chinese parrotbill nesting on the valve was pecking at the rust. Hannah climbed up the tilted wellhead frame, and reed flowers passed through her raised hair. Lu Yong's camera was suddenly covered with mist - the remaining pressure inside the oil tree was oozing out hot springs with a sulfur smell from the cracks.

"Close your eyes!" Old Wu suddenly growled.

The searchlights from the southeast pumping station pierced the twilight, and the startled jacanas flew into the beams of light, as if a sky full of stars were sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner.

On Lu Yong's arm, which was used to block the strong light for Hannah, was a lost blue kingfisher. Its metallic feathers blended in with the reflection of the pipes in the distance.

Spending the night in the duty room of the observatory, Hannah was awakened by the vibration of the air conditioner outdoor unit.

The wetlands glowed strangely in the moonlight, and through night vision binoculars, the light bands formed by the oil spill overlapped with the migratory routes of migratory birds. (End of this chapter)