Early morning fog rests on the mountaintops, a thick blanket of mist that won’t last more than a few hours. In the chill of the waking hours it is easy to forget where I am. There’s not yet much noise since the others are still sleeping. A breeze whispers past making the walls of my flimsy canvas tent dance. I wrap my fingers around a hot tin mug of coffee and find myself wishing this was real. It’s real enough for the three days I’m here but I want this life all the time. I want to be in nature, to be away from the tall buildings, the cell towers, the internet cafes. I want to be in the land my ancestors fought on and fought for. I want to be in a place where history matters and where there is pride in where you came from.
Then it begins. It’s soft at first, hard to make out. A lone piper playing a melody I’ve heard many times over. No other version clutches at me like this, though. “Amazing Grace,” slow, steady and sweet. It fills the air, gets louder as the notes repeat themselves and more pipers join in the chorus.
I watch a man leave his tent farther down the field. He is dressed in a Jacobite shirt, a kilt in the colors of his clan, and tall knee high fur-lined boots. He brings with him his own set of pipes. The air sack is tucked under his arm, the chanter in his mouth. He blows a few times to fill the reservoir and the familiar monotonous drone becomes the only thing I hear for the briefest moment. Then with sure fingers he grips the pipes and joins in with the melody.
I’m sure the entire field is awake now. The sound of bagpipes fills all of my senses. It’s being bounced off the surrounding mountains, amplified until I feel like I am living inside the sound. Without a word everyone is up and moving. I find myself moving, too. We are coming together without being told to or being asked. Clansmen find their own and move themselves into an instinctual formation. A drum major with a tall hat stands before each group, his silver mace bobbing up and down to a determined rhythm.
And then we’re moving once more.
A mass of people with one thing in mind. This is the morning the games really begin. This is the morning to show just where it is you come from and that you are proud to call yourself a Scotsman. I find myself wanting to follow them though I am swept away by the throng of spectators vying for the best view of the field. The grass is still cold and crunchy with frost under my bare hands when I reach for the ground but I sit anyway, too entranced to do anything but what everyone else is doing.
Suddenly all at once every piper stops and there is complete silence. It’s a shock to my ears. Heads are bowed and a prayer is said. An old man bent over from age offers heartfelt mutterings to get us started. Most of the words are impossible to make out from his thick accent. But we all recognize “amen” and a good portion of us repeats it.
Let the games begin.