2014-09-27

Like any good Scottish wee tale, this one begins as the sun rises and the clan heads north to the Highlands. In this case the highlands of New Hampshire, as we make our way to the annual Highland Games and Festival at Loon Mountain ski resort.


Since Ann is driving it gives me an opportunity to take in the countryside while pretending Ann isn’t really driving. Now don’t get me wrong, our insurance premiums say that Ann is a great driver but my fight or flight instinct reminds me that I can do neither when I’m the passenger in her Jeep. Just to give you an idea of how famous her driving is, they hired an artist to paint pictures of her driving and used the on and off ramps as galleries.


Half of an adventure is getting there, we’ve wasted no time in finding the absurdity in attempting to get there. I’ll say this about New Hampshire, the “Live Free or Die” state, they are very kind to drivers. Ann announces to me that the giant neon sign on the highway says “State Police Ahead” and lo and behold a mile up the road is a New Hampshire State Police vehicle. Truth be told, I have trouble believing that they have been kind enough to put a giant neon sign out to warn Ann to slow down and begin to believe the Scottish fairy folk, or Sìdhicheanare, are already watching over us on our Gaelic adventure.

Our first stop is a gathering of the clan that has been taking place for the past two days in Ossipee, N.H. Since this is our first time to our most excellent hosts home, we are relying on the GPS for directions. Electronic devices don’t function well around the Sìdhicheanare, in no time the GPS directs us to an abandoned house by the side of the highway.


The windows are boarded up and the yard is one part junkyard and one part sand pit. After assuring ourselves, mostly by repeating the statement “this can’t be the house”, we begin to call and text anyone who may be able to tell us where we took a wrong turn. In the meanwhile a woman in a bathrobe carrying a shotgun and walking a pit bull come down the driveway of the abandoned house. Alright, so she is carrying a coffee mug and walking a beagle, but she is still shit-bag crazy and yelling at us to “be gone” and “get away from here”.

After many miles and several attempts to find the correct address on our own we meet our host back in front of the abandoned house and follow him several miles up a road to his home. The house is already full of people, dogs, and a horse playing the ukulele, which seems stranger than it really was.

The clan piles into half-a-dozen cars and makes the trek across the Kancamagus Highway to Loon Mountain. To those of us who live in the city, a 45-minute drive across a road that splits a mountain range and doesn’t have a gas station or Starbucks on it is a little intimidating. The 35-mile stretch of highway is named after a Sachem of the Pennacook Indians who, tired of fighting with the English settlers, opened a road where they wouldn’t want to stop since there were no gas stations or Starbucks. Of course we arrive in time to find that there are no parking spaces left at the mountain and that we will have to park in town and be shuttled to the games.

The poor folks at the Price Chopper supermarket didn’t expect 15 adults, many who had been drinking since before the sun came up, and a few wee tikes who feel a need to pee anytime anyone else does, to descend upon them looking for a bathroom. They were good sports about it considering the only restroom was off of their break-room and we had many a relaxing moment sitting with the stock clerks and cashiers who erroneously thought they could avoid the customers for a few minutes.

The weather was a typical fall day in the mountains with overcast skies and a brisk wind. Many people didn’t take to the “Highland” weather and packed the ski lodge to watch the Heavy Athletic events. Of course this was also the only place you could get a mixed drink which made it impossible to get a beer so we struck out for a better drinking, I mean vantage point.

All around us were the traditional sounds of Scotland. There were Bag Pipes and Fiddles, Pipe and Drum Bands, Scottish Harps, and sheep screaming.

Many of Scottish Heavy Athletics were already taking place including the Weight Over Bar, Weight for Distance,

the Sheaf Toss, the Braemar Stone Toss, Kilt Ironing, Midget Toss, and Drink Until You Toss Your Haggis.

The main event of the day is The Caber Toss, in which burly men in kilts throw a telephone pole end-over-end for distance. As far as I can tell this event originated in Scotland in the 1950’s since they had all these big logs and hadn’t invented the wheel yet.

By this point we had found the ancestral home of our clan, The Beer Garden. There all the clans meet on equal ground and drink to each others health. Then they drink to their own health. Then they stop finding the need to make excuses to drink and just keep getting back into the beer line.

A word on kilts; the original filleadh mhòr or great kilt could be worn as a cloak while the modern kilt of today covers from the waist to the knees. The kilt is made of worsted wool and every clan has their own tartan, or pattern. Tartans there included Clan MacEwen, Clan MacFarlane, and the House of Gordon which sounds more like a fashion firm. Maybe they create all the kilt designs for the season.

The women in our clan are growing bored watching men throw rocks and want to know when the cartwheel competition will begin, since it’s a well known fact that Highlanders wear nothing beneath their kilts.

traditional food

haggis thunpers bangers

We of course went with that most Scortish of dishes, hamburgers.

the drive is do long they could never take over

just one rainbow

Haggis and neeps. stovies, clapshot, mince and tatties. We of course went with that Scottish staple, the Hamburger.

Apparently the Scots really know how to drink. I have never seen this many people, this few porta-johns and no line. Either that or those kilts serve a dual purpose and I should have watched more closely where I was standing.

The shuttle bus ride back to town and the parking lot looked a lot more like a refugee bus trying to get across the border.

Of course no Scottish night would be complete without a roaring fire.

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