Spain, right before you get to the bullshit cross at the top of the hill, on the Camino de Santiago. The Cruz de Ferro — the Iron Cross — stands approximately 1,500 meters above sea level between Foncebadón and Manjarín, in León. The stone pile beneath that cross is older than the cross itself. Romans built stone cairns at mountain passes and crossroads as offerings to Mercury, the protector of travelers. The Celts had a shrine there before that. An eleventh-century hermit monk named Gaucelmo placed a pole and a cross on top of the pagan pile to Christianize it, then built a pilgrim hospital down the road in Foncebadón. The stones weren't always symbolic. Snow and fog erase that pass, and travelers stacked stones so people wouldn't die trying to find the road. A man froze to death next to that cross in 1799; it's recorded in the parish register. The cross standing there now isn't even the original. The real one is kept in the Museo de los Caminos, inside Gaudí's Episcopal Palace in Astorga. What everyone photographs is a replica. A copy standing above a pile of stones whose history reaches further back than the object people have come to worship. Where everyone leaves that fucking bullshit rock they carry. I left my brass knuckles and my hammock at the bottom of that bullshit hill. I also stole a pair of shoes I needed on that same Camino, and took a few dollars when I needed them. That's what happened. I'm not going to dress it up into something else. Medieval pilgrims were ordered to carry a stone up that hill to help mark the road in winter. They were doing work, not making meaning. They were helping identify a route through a mountain pass where snow, fog, and darkness could mean the difference between reaching the next settlement and dying on the way. The stones had a practical purpose. They marked the road and helped people survive. Now it's everyone performing the same gesture they watched someone else perform, carrying a stone bought in a gift shop to leave it on the pile. The act repeats itself, and the pile grows. Everyone has a reason, or believes they need one. Everyone has something to leave behind, something to release, something to remember, something to prove. The gesture has become a ritual inherited from other people. They participate because the people before them participated. They see the pile, add their stone, take their photograph, and continue walking. What was once a marker along a dangerous road has become a destination in itself. I watched every fucking idiot leave their open bags, money, and lives open in public spaces. At the Irache monastery wine fountain, two kilometers past Estella, pilgrims literally line up to drink free wine from a public spout, mouths open, packs on the ground, backs turned. That fountain has run since the Middle Ages. Nobody guards it. People arrive, drink, and move along. The wine is there, the fountain is there, and the people trust the situation enough to participate. They leave their belongings behind while concentrating on the experience in front of them. I've also seen what's behind locked boxes. Locks are for the owners' comfort, nothing else. Locks are broken all the time. I'm from Southern California. If you have a doorknob I can turn it. It does not matter whether you think that key in your pocket is useful or not. A lock is an object, a mechanism intended to restrict access. It is not an absolute guarantee. The person who owns the lock may believe the contents are protected, but belief and protection are not the same thing. The key can be lost, the lock can fail, and the door can be opened. The existence of a barrier does not establish that the barrier is impossible to overcome. People place their trust in objects and the assumptions attached to them. They trust the lock because it looks secure, the stone because someone told them what it means, and the ritual because other people perform it. They trust the price because someone else assigned it. Often, they never examine the thing itself, its actual purpose, or the circumstances that gave it significance in the first place. Currently, I'm in Guatemala, walking around and seeing all the bullshit. Everybody robbing their neighbor of the simple life, for nothing. People taking from one another, competing over possessions, and creating conflict around things that, in the larger scheme of existence, have no inherent importance beyond their uses and the meanings people assign to them. A person thinks a shitty object holds value because of assumptions, because somebody wants it, somebody else owns it, or somebody has convinced everyone that it should be worth something. The assumptions become the standard, and the standard becomes the justification. Not understanding. Understanding would bring value to that person. That shitty belt, guitar, beer. Each has a purpose, a use, and a significance that changes according to the person holding it, the circumstances surrounding it, and the place where it exists. A belt can hold up a pair of pants. A guitar can make music. A beer can be consumed. These are simple functions, but people attach other meanings to them, sometimes so far removed from their actual purpose that the object itself becomes secondary. A belt becomes a status symbol. A guitar becomes a possession to protect or sell. A beer becomes a commodity whose price changes depending on which side of a street corner you're standing on. The same object can mean something entirely different a few miles away, in another city, across a border, or in another country. Its physical existence does not change merely because its market price changes. Its material does not become more substantial because someone is willing to pay more for it. The difference lies in the circumstances, the people, the resources available, the demand, and the assumptions surrounding the exchange. People move through life as though the standards they have inherited are universal facts. They forget that the world extends beyond the immediate place where they stand. They confuse agreement with truth and familiarity with understanding. Instantaneous issues revolving around this small planet. Everyone claims bullshit — earth, wind, fire, water; ignorance ignores energy. The earth is here whether anyone recognizes its importance or not. Wind moves regardless of what anyone believes about it. Fire produces heat and transforms what it touches. Water sustains life, moves through landscapes, and changes the conditions in which people live. These are physical realities. Their existence and effects do not depend on whether someone understands them, owns them, or assigns them a price. Energy is present in the movement of the world, in the changing of conditions, and in the forces that sustain life and transform matter. People can argue over ownership, draw boundaries, and create systems of exchange, but none of those actions removes the underlying physical realities. The earth continues to exist beyond the boundaries people draw upon it. Wind does not recognize a property line. Water does not become meaningful only when someone sells it. Fire does not ask what someone believes before it produces heat. Ignorance ignores energy. It concentrates on the object while overlooking the forces that make it useful, the circumstances that give it meaning, and the larger reality in which it exists. It sees the stone but not the road. It sees the lock but not its limitations. It sees the possession but not the person, the need, or the circumstances that make possession matter in the first place. And so people keep carrying their stones up the hill. They leave them on the pile, buy objects, guard them, steal them, and fight over what they believe those objects are worth. They continue performing gestures whose origins they may not understand, protecting things they may not need, and pursuing things whose importance depends on the opinions of others. I walked that Camino. I saw the cross, the stones, the people, the belongings left unattended, the wine fountain, and the behavior surrounding them. I left my brass knuckles and my hammock at the bottom of that bullshit hill. I took shoes because I needed them. I took a few dollars when I needed them. I observed what people did, what they trusted, what they protected, what they ignored, and what they believed. Now I'm in Guatemala, walking around and seeing the same basic human condition expressed in different places and circumstances. People continue to defend their assumptions and take from one another while the simple life remains available to those who can recognize it. The world is larger than the corner on which someone stands, the object someone owns, the ritual someone performs, or the explanation someone has been given. I'm Evan Winter. My mailing address is P.O. Box 312786, Avalon, California 90704. Post mail only. I was shipwrecked on Catalina Island a few years back and stake my claim. I'm nothing more than another wrecked man. The good life...