When it was time to leave, which was really at the very end of the sunny day since no one wanted to leave, we gathered our belongings into beach bags, and I returned the boys' eyeglasses to their respective owners.
Natalya and I could see that Gabriel was exhausted. But, being who he is, he will never admit it. Neither did he make any exception today.
So, we are approaching the pedestrian path, which returns beachgoers to the parking lot, and this path is already pretty steep, with the parking lot a good 500m away, all uphill, and Gabriel spots what can only be termed as a mountain goat path, off to the side. If the pedestrian path is tough, this goat path is deranged.
Uh oh.
I can see where he is going, but this time — even with Gabriel — I don't think he will decide to do it. It is much steeper than it appears in the video. And he is tired already. He can hardly walk.
Natalya, pretty loudly, since Gabriel is already far away:
"Gabriel, non! On peut pas. C'est trop raide." You can't go that way. It's too steep.
No reply. Head down, straight ahead, with his boat dragging behind him, Gabriel — the ostensible Hauptmann of a Fallschirmjäger unit — is going to climb this path, okay?
And he does.
And you know what, he never looked back. Not once. Not to see if anyone was still there, if any one was looking after him, if we were even still there at all, if we had (or not) indeed continued on to negotiate for ourselves the "normal" pedestrian path, that silly path of reason which held no interest for him. He just went, with no idea who would be at the top, or even really what would be at the top, because he has never been here in his life.
As you can see in the film, he appears to stop a few times. There is a reason for this. The path is very steep, and is composed of very deep sand. Very hard to climb, as Maxime pointed out to Mama and I when we reached the top, and were reunited with Gabriel.
Honestly, sometimes I can only do one thing with Gabriel. Salute him. He is his own man, period.
We meet at the top of the path, spend some time investigating the ruined chapel, then head up the final stretch to the car....
Gabriel fell asleep in 60 seconds