Cruz de Ferro

We reached the Cruz de Ferro mid-morning of a foggy day. My guide book said to go with no expectations or you may be disappointed. Someone else had said it was ugly and people had just dumped trash from their ruck sacks there. I thought about that while I was walking up. A place where humanity unloads burdens and the ugly things of their lives shouldn't be beautiful. We turned a corner and came upon it unexpectedly. As you can see by the photo, the mists where a perfect setting. The feeling was solemn as pilgrims reached into their bags to pull out their long -carried stones and trudged up the mound. I, too, pulled out my little plastic sack which held my symbolic burdens and those of others whom I had promised I would lay at the foot of the cross. As I walked up that hill, I felt a wave of overwhelming emotion. Littering the ground and covering the lower portion of the pole were rocks with farewells written on them, little toys, messages, photographs, and thousands of tokens of unknown pain, sorrow and suffering. I laid my stones down next to a silver scallop shell that I will carry all the way to Santiago and home again. I took this photo and prayed over each one of them as Mercedes, one of the Dominican sisters that I told you about many weeks ago, chanted a Lakota song to the wind. "Lakota energy is good energy," I said to her. "Yes, good energy," she nodded.
We are now in a little town called Acebo, and tomorrow we hope to be in the city of Ponferrada. As we walked down the steep slope from the Cruz, the path was like Zubiri redux--awful and stony --but as we came to a turn in the path, the mist had cleared and a beautiful green valley lay spread out before us with the city of Ponferrada far below, bathed in golden light. A promise of sunshine tomorrow!
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