A couple of weeks ago I spent a weekend in North Carolina at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games. I was camped with my grandparents in their RV right next to a small clearing in the cramped camping area. A clearing where the pipers and drummers would play in the evenings after the end of the days festivities. I wrote the following piece on the last night of the Games. It veers a little farther out of the arena of sentiment into the desolate expanse of sentimentality than I like, but I do like some of the writing, so I present it here mostly unedited.
Sitting on the step of my grandparent’s motorhome as nine pipers, several drummers, and two dancers carouse in the strong light of a halogen lamp. The music ended, a liquored up drummer steps into the circle to dance his own jig. His kilt flaps around his knees, boots whirling and sliding on the grass. They kick off a new song with the command, “March” and one of the dancers from before leaps into the circle to spin another round. Those that know the tune join in while the others listen on. When the song is suggested that they all know, the power of their exhalations is enough to shake the bark from the trees.
Here on the final night of the conclave on the mountain side, it is a large crowd that encircles the players. Soon they’ll return to jobs and schools and lives of monotony. For tonight though they share in the sharp thrill of the moment. The beat of a single drum rattles my feet on the metal step of the RV as a lone piper kicks off the next song. Slow with a hint of mourning, yet when the others join in shades of joy stroll into the mix. The blowing mouths and flickering fingers cut across gender and age lines, young and old, men and women all pour their spirits into their instruments. As one young man ties off a particularly intricate solo piece, the crowd lets forth with their own music of whoops and applause.
The music is silenced for a moment then as a piper who rarely misses the event is reached via phone. In the Air Force, he is deployed now in Mississippi and unable to attend. After a rousing shout of “Casey, we miss you,” the group launches into a brief round of “Scotland the Brave” all delivered to him via the weak link of a cell phone. The moment is just another indication of the deep ties the members of this disparate group feel. While they may have never met before, may live thousands of miles apart, and may never meet again, here, they are all family. Traced far enough back, many are family. The actual blood ties do not matter though. It’s something else that acts as the glue here, this night and this weekend. I share a heritage with these people and I feel it to, feel drawn deeply into this group of people I’ve never met. Our ancestors likely came together similarly in musical celebration, in battles, and hover now somewhere in that realm one step removed from this one where all our spirits shall pass when our time is done. There, just behind us, they watch as we celebrate our heritage, as we remember that regardless of any divisions between us, we are all family.