La Cruz de Ferro

October 12

We set out into the cold drizzle and fog.  My prayers this morning are for insight.  I still don't know what my rock is for.

I am so preoccupied with following the trail through the rolling fog, and trying to hear a whisper from God, that we are approaching the cross without me being conscious of any great exertion to climb to it.  Although we reach it sooner than we expect, it's divine timing.  The sun is just rising over the peaks.

The area is a bit touristy.  There is a well-paved road and a parking lot.  There is plenty of cleared space with abundant picnic tables and benches.  There are restrooms and what looks to be a small wooden chapel.

You really don't get a private moment, a time when you are up there by yourself.  You have to make it private in your mind and heart.  When I am there, face-to-face with the cross, surrounded by innumerable personal tributes--or whatever people meant theirs to be--no great revelation comes to me.  Divine inspiration does not strike.  Truthfully, I haven't been expecting anything of the sort.  I thought, though, that by the time I reached the cross, I'd have a sense of purpose.

I nestle my rock in among some others and go back down.  I still don't know what I laid at the foot of that cross.  Perhaps I never will.