Baboon

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Suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of an astonishing landscape: luminous, white sand dunes on all sides, wind swept, small trees twisting under the vast open sky. We gasped joyfully as though coming up for air after being under water too long. We stood there looking around, our eyes blinking after staring at the gravel road in the dark forest for so long. Even the smell was different here, salty and fresh, the sea had to be close by. But we lost our bearings long ago. We were going in circles. It was hot. We had a six-year-old boy and dachshund with us. The bikes were old and rusty, the danger of getting a flat was imminent. We stood completely still and listened. The wind moved through the leaves with a faint rustling, the birds sang, and then one shrieked, hoarse and desperate, as if for its life. Sebastian looked nervously at me. "It's just a buzzard. Nothing to be afraid of."

"Come here, Seba. Do you want a cookie?" You called the boy over with excessive gentleness, and I caught myself jerking my head around with an exaggerated and timid movement to look behind us. There was the forest we had come from, dark and still as a deep lake. The path stretched before us through what looked like a little birch grove, and beyond that the dense pine forest, moss, heather, and fallen trunks, grayish black with cracked branches sticking out like spikes.

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