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【阅读理解】Reading: The Sundial Maker of Finnmark
The sledge wouldn't budge. Anders Voss, 41, a former divisional logistics officer turned expedition guide, stood in the minus 38 degree air and swore quietly.
Two hundred and twelve kilometres from the nearest settlement, his right hand had stopped answering him three days earlier.
Rewind to 2016. Anders had spent eleven years moving cargo for an agricultural equipment firm in Tromso, a job that demanded exact timing and a mastery of paperwork.
Then a routine medical check produced a statistical anomaly: early-onset nerve damage, cause unknown, possibly hereditary. His doctor used the word progressive. Anders heard the word impossible.
He resigned within the month, sold his flat, and chose to dedicate what mobility he had left to a winter traverse of the Finnmark plateau, a route of some 640 kilometres that he had first skied at nineteen.
It was, he admitted, an audacious and arguably stupid plan. His sister called it arrogance dressed as courage.
Preparation consumed two years. He amassed sponsors, mostly small Norwegian firms; secured a donation of lightweight equipment worth 180,000 kroner; and assembled a crew of three.
The team comprised Marta Lindqvist, 34, a physiotherapist who specialised in nerve rehabilitation, and two brothers, Peder and Nils Haugen, both in their late twenties.
Marta was blunt from the start. "You will lose sensation in stages," she told him in his kitchen, tracing the nerve pathways on a napkin. "First the fingertips. Then grip. When the grip goes, you stop. Not negotiate. Stop."
Anders nodded, and said nothing, which she later learned was his way of resisting any instruction he found inconvenient.
The crossing commenced on 4 January 2019. For eleven days the weather was almost kind — long blue hours, hard snow, a lull in the wind that felt like a truce.
Anders was energetic, practically euphoric. He would ski ahead, then halt and wait, grinning, while the others caught up.
On day twelve a storm arrived with a torrent of snow that eliminated all visual reference; the party had to lie stationary in tents for thirty-one hours, burning fuel they could not replace.
When they emerged, Anders could no longer fasten his own boots. He grunted at Peder's offer of help, which everyone understood to denote refusal.
By day twenty the arithmetic had turned hostile. Their progress averaged 14 kilometres a day against a target of 22. Food was finite: nine days of rations remained, and the next depot lay 190 kilometres east.
Anders's concentration was failing; twice he deviated from the bearing and had to be corrected. Marta pulled the plug. "This is not a trial of character," she said. "It is a trial of tissue. Yours is losing."
He insisted on one more day, then another, and lost both arguments at dawn.
The rescue was a snowmobile crew flown in at a cost of 340,000 kroner, most of it covered by insurance and the rest by a crowdfunding page that raised the sum in nineteen hours.
What haunted Anders was not the failure but the aftermath: an interview he gave to a regional paper in which he compared himself to a broken instrument.
The comment drew 4,000 responses, some cruel, some kind, all of them missing his point. He had wanted, he said, to demonstrate that a disabled body could still make a claim on the territory of the young.
Instead he had proven only that ice does not care about metaphors.
Two summers later, Marta found him in a workshop behind his sister's house, building sundials. Small ones, intricate, cut from scrap brass.
He could hold a file if he braced his wrist against the bench. He explained the principle with obvious delight: the gnomon, the shadow, the slow correspondence between the sun's position and the hour. No batteries. No nerves required.
He had sold forty-one of them, and one had gone to a school in Kirkenes, where, according to a letter he kept folded in his wallet, a nine-year-old girl had used it to explain time to her class.
Anders was, by his own account, extremely bad at conventional employment and extremely good at something else. The workshop smelled of metal and coffee. A half-finished dial lay under the lamp, its shadow an inch from noon, and he was still deciding whether the marking for one o'clock should be longer than the others.
Questions
1. What was Anders Voss's occupation before he became an expedition guide?
A. A physiotherapist specialising in nerve rehabilitation. B. A teacher at a school in Kirkenes. C. A divisional logistics officer moving cargo for an agricultural equipment firm. D. A snowmobile rescue crew member.
2. Why did Marta Lindqvist insist on stopping the expedition on day twenty?
A. The team had run out of food completely. B. Their progress was too slow, food was limited, and Anders's condition was deteriorating. C. Anders had lost all sensation in his hands and could not ski. D. A storm had destroyed their tents and equipment.
3. What does the word "finite" most nearly mean in the sentence "Food was finite: nine days of rations remained"?
A. Limited in quantity. B. Plentiful and available. C. Nutritious and sufficient. D. Frozen and preserved.
4. What can be inferred about Anders's reaction to Marta's instructions during the preparation and early crossing?
A. He was grateful for her help and immediately changed his behaviour. B. He followed her advice carefully and asked many questions. C. He often resisted indirectly by staying silent or ignoring her suggestions. D. He openly argued with her and refused to listen.
5. Which title best captures the main idea of the passage?
A. How to Build a Sundial: A Step-by-Step Guide. B. From Broken Nerves to Brass Sundials: Anders Voss's Unconventional Recovery. C. A Failed Expedition: The Dangers of Arctic Travel. D. The Rescue That Cost 340,000 Kroner.