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PrintPipes, Drums, and Flying Cannonballs
The Jackson Hole Scottish Festival has been roaring for a decade
Rob Paul of Idaho Falls tosses a “cannonball” in the Highlander’s version of the shot put competition.
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David Macfarlane had a passing interest in his Scottish heritage about fifteen years ago, when he got an itching to toss a caber or two.
The broadcasting technician possessed a couple of tartan ties, but that was about the extent of his knowledge about his roots. Seeking more, he crossed the Continental Divide to drop in on a Highlands festival in Lander, where he immediately got hooked on the heavy athletics that seemed a fit with his stout frame.
Then he recognized a man in a kilt with a familiar tartan—the green Macfarlane hunting pattern. And, “Aye,” not only was he a Macfarlane, he represented the Clan Macfarlane Society.
As Macfarlane dug deeper into his heritage, visiting festivals in Montana and Utah, he also began to share his haggis with a couple of Scots in Jackson Hole. Together, they celebrated the anniversary of the birth of poet Robert Burns annually. When one of that group’s members, Jackson’s police chief Dave Cameron, died in a tragic tractor accident, the backyard Highland games they were planning for that summer morphed into a memorial.
