Hill of Crosses

Hi Everyone! For those of you who didn't know, I spent last week in Russia for fall break. Some of my next posts are going to be exactly as I wrote them and some will be looking back from now. Hopefully, I'll have them all up by the end of the week:)

Day 1

I am currently on a yellow train hurtling though the frosty autumn air. Our destination is a foreboding specter in our mind's eye, a land of czars and palaces, a land of crime and punishment, a land of mayhem and mystery...but I'm getting ahead of the story.

So this morning I awoke to the sound of Hannah fiercely whispering, "Cole, COLE!"
"What?" I painfully moaned.
"It's time to leave NOW!"
"Dang it!"This is what I got for staying up late packing and talking to friends. Luckily, I know my tendencies so well that I had laid out all my clothes the night before. After jumping into them like a firefighter and making my bed in a manner that would induce Martha Stewart to tears, I flew down the stairs.

The next few hours on the bus were a haze of Celtic music, someone violently puking, and throbbing neck cramps. As I finally awoke and glanced out the window, I was shocked at the sight of our first destination, the Hill of Crosses. The bus unloaded us, and as I walked toward the hill, my feet were heavy with apprehension and my eyes were hypnotized by the eerie sight.

Hundreds of crosses, thousands of crosses, millions of crosses shot up from the flat landscape and formed a gray mountain in the midst of green farmland. Within basic boundaries, crosses streamed, poured, and gushed forth from one another. Some were behemoth medieval marvels and others were smaller than a quarter. Jesus wore several variations on mind-blowing agony, sometimes he looked angry, other times-heartbroken, and occasionally there was faint glimmer of hope.

My reaction was mixed, as one moment I would be contemplating the faith of so many and the next I would be estimating how many vampires the place could withstand. Eventually, our time was up and I savored the image of the Hill as it faded into the horizon. Then Emas got on the loudspeaker to share some of the local lore. He started by saying that if you leave a cross and make a wish, that wish will come true. The exception is making a wish for someone's death which will allegedly result in the death of one of your siblings.

During the times of the Nazis and the Soviets, Lithuanians used the Hill of Crosses as a sign of peaceful resistance. They wanted to leave a part of themselves in their beloved homeland, even as they were being shipped to a desolate tundra. Even more chilling was the story of the man hired to demolish the hill many years ago. He brought his infant son to the Hill that day and began to bulldoze. At one point, he had to get out in order to toss aside some crosses by hand. Suddenly, the bulldozer starting rolling of its own accord. His child tumbled out of the cab and was crushed beneath the wheels. From that day forward, no one dared harm the Hill of Crosses.

That story, as well as others involving strange sounds, powerful miracles, and weeping Marys, have cemented the Hill of Crosses in the mind of pilgrims as a powerful symbol of hope, an unsettling visage of faith.