On my way to Cruz Ferro

Sunrise on the way to Santiago de Compostella

Sunrise as seen from my hostel in Foncebadón on the Camino Francés, the French way to Santiago de Compostela. I took this picture just moments ago.

I will start the day with a short, two-kilometer, walk to Cruz Ferro: a well-known landmark on this trail on what is nearly the highest point of the 500-mile Camino Francés. Cruz Ferro is a tall wooden pole topped with an iron cross.

This ancient monument was likely first erected by the ancient Celts, then dedicated by the Romans to their god Mercury and later crowned by the cross and renamed as a Christian site in the 9th-century.

For many centuries, pilgrims have brought a stone to the place to represent their burden. The stone and the burden are left here, leaving the pilgrim lighter (literally and figuratively) for the journey ahead.

We, the pilgrims of the modern age, will leave future geologists puzzled how this stone diversity got here.

I will leave a tiny stone from the backyard of the house on the island. Maybe I don’t carry much of a burden, or maybe I just didn’t feel like carrying stones to the mountain.