Last weekend, I went to the Scottish Highland Games in Enumclaw, which served as a lesson in expectations versus reality. For instance, I’m not quite sure what exactly I expected to see as soon as I crossed into Enumclaw’s borders, perhaps dudes getting it on with horses on every streetcorner, but no, it was merely every other streetcorner. At the games themselves, I expected an authentic Scottish experience…and that wasn’t so much the case, either. First things first: I entered the grounds only to discover that the Scots have not learned their lesson from not merely one, but FOUR Terminator films, and have doomed us all by creating Skynet. The second thing I learned is that while the venue may be low on commodities like flush toilets, they do believe in providing group showers. Somewhere along the way, I realized there wasn’t really an authentic Scottish experience to be had. Much ado is made about the storied history of kilts and the exclusivity of individual tartan patterns to specific clans, but they’re neither as old nor as traditional as many people believe. No matter what Mel Gibson donned in Braveheart, William Wallace was not wearing a kilt in the 1300s: the kilt wasn’t invented until 1725, and it wasn’t adopted as a symbol of national identity until the ninteenth century. It has since been reclaimed by schlubby men who don’t want to wear underpants and who always have mysterious chef boy ardee stains on their wifebeaters in the form of the Utilikilt. As for tartan designs, “The sixteenth century writers who first noticed the Highland dress clearly did not know any such differentiation. They describe the plaids of the chiefs as coloured, those of their followers as brown, so that any differentiation of colour, in their time, was by social status, not by clan. The earliest evidence which has been adduced in support of differentiation by a clan is a remark by Martin Martin, who visited the Western Islands at the end of the seventeenth century. But Martin merely assigns different patterns to different localities: he does not differentiate them by clans; and in fact the evidence against differentiation by clans is strong. Thus, a carefully painted series of portraits of the different members of the Grant family by Richard Waitt in the eighteenth century shows all of them in different tartans; the portraits of the Macdonalds of Armadale show at least ‘six distinct setts of tartan’; and contemporary evidence concerning the rebellion of 1745–whether pictorial, sartorial, or literary–shows no differentiation of clans, no continuity of setts. The only way in which a Highlander’s loyalty could be discerned was not by his tartan but by the cockade in his bonnet. Tartans were a matter of private taste, or necessity, only. Indeed, in October 1745, when the Young Chevalier was in Edinburgh with his army, the Caledonian Mercury advertised ‘a great choice of tartans, the newest patterns’. As D.W. Stewart reluctantly admits, this is a great stumbling block in the way of those who argue for the antiquity of the patterns; for it seems peculiar that, when the city was filled with Highlanders of all ranks and many clans, they should be offered not their ancient setts but ‘a great choice of the newest patterns’.”^(source) I get it, people want to feel a connection to history, to their ancestors, but is inventing tradition the best way to do it, instead of actually learning about their history? All they’re doing is making it easy for purveyors of bullshit to make a buck off of them. Buy a printout of the names of your ancestors, matted in whatever pattern was registered for them in the ancient 1960s!

^{I bet these guys wish they knew they could have gotten something other than puke-colored kilts. Woof!}

Whatever the intentions of the Scottish Highland Games were initially, it’s pretty well become like any convention gathering: a place to sell elf-ears to true believers. I saw, in no particular order, GothScots (“You may take our lives, but you’ll never take our black lipstick!”), druids, pirates, Legolas’ groupies, a dude fully dressed like The Crow–it’s like history has come to life right in front of me!

^{Oh shit, it’s Stevie Nicks!}

Instead of hot men in kilts battling one another on a field with their bare hands, there was a dog parade, and not-so-hot guys in kilts handling their poles.

There was also a booth selling a variety of authentic Highland weapons…like Frodo’s blade Sting, and Link’s Master Sword. Notable Scottish warriors, both! After ingesting some greasy ‘Scottish’ fair food, mocking the GothScots with some bored teenagers working the lemonade stand, and listening to some Celtic ‘singers’ yowl like dying cats, I joined Jeanine at her booth and helped her card jewelry/misuse her supplies. That’s where I also met the lovely loree_borealis. We were seated next to the Sketchy Brit Foods booth, and across from a business with an unfortunate name. When I first looked over, I thought it said:

^{“We’ve got a fix on your anus’ RFID chip, ma’am, it’s crossed the border into Canada!”}

When Laurie looked over, she thought it said:

^{New terminology for a cheating bastard?}

So, we had many a laugh at the poor proprietors of Wandering WAngus. Eventually, I crafted a handpuppet out of a brown bag, named him Brownie McCleod, and tried to sell people their fortunes for a dollar shoved through his mouth-hole. Apparently there is a market for elf ears at the Highland Games but not so much for paper soothsayers.

^{Who wouldn’t trust this face?}

After we posed for a photograph in front of the shop, we put it up for the night and then went to Muckleshoot to taste of their buffet, which devolved (of course) into an eating contest of sorts for me. Apparently my stomach does have upper limits and those were reached and nearly breached as I groaned my way out of the restaurant. After we’d finished, piemancer joined us and we were off to another restaurant in the casino for drinks and chatting. It might not have been a day full of history, but it was a day full of awesome! Here is a bonus ‘fair bear’ peeing out the name of the expo:

Richard Tracy has been working on an outdoor installment for nearly thirty years, his ArtYard, working with found and repurposed materials. Everything he makes is at the mercy of the elements, and so his pieces are constantly in a state of flux; creation and destruction with the new springing from the ashes of the old. On Sunday, I drove to Centralia to visit Rich and see his creation.

There were a several other visitors there, and Rich greeted and spent time with every single person, dragging his reluctant round dog behind him. I liked him immediately. He rounded us up near the entrance and handed each person a tassel and told us that if we particularly liked something he made, we should thank him by hanging that tassel off of the piece, “high or low, naughty or nice”, but that we were not to allow him to see us putting the tassel in place. He explained that because he’s constantly in the yard, he’s lost the ability to see it the way visitors do, and whenever he finds a tassel, he goes silent and contemplates the art, because we’ve then given him the gift of perspective.  

He brought us over to his first piece, The King & Queen, saying “The Queen is larger because she has more power. We would have fewer wars if we had more queens.” We were then mainly left to our own devices in touring the yard. It’s almost beyond description, almost beyond comprehension. Even photographs do a poor job capturing it. It really must be experienced. Every few minutes, Rich would make the rounds and point out something about the piece we were looking at. He encouraged everyone to look at the space around the art as well, at how nature has incorporated itself in and around the art, making it something more than it was before. The yard itself almost reads like a study in variation and repetition; his fondness for the number five, for circles and spheres, the way the same materials will pop up in similar yet different configurations–what could be a jumble of unrelated items is made cohesive with an underlying theme.

As I looked at this wall, Rich approached me and said the head mounted on the right is one of the most-photographed pieces in the yard, the people’s choice. He’s wanted to throw it away many times but has stayed his hand at the last moment because he can’t bring himself to destroy something that so many people like. Mainly, he is disappointed that the face on the right gets so much attention, and the face on the left comparatively little, given that the face on the left is one of his personal favorites, inspired by Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror. But he said it was ever that way in the art classes he taught as well; he would teach no more than five students at a time, and everyone’s voice was as important as his own. He also described his process for me, and said that he works very hard to get out of his own way when he creates–that he can’t stop and scrutinize every step along the way or he’d never finish anything. He just keeps working until it comes together and feels right. Sometimes it never does reach that stage, but he won’t know until he puts it all together. I think that’s useful advice for anyone engaging in creative endeavors–just keep working, things you were intially unsure about may come together in a way you wouldn’t expect. We parted with him telling the story of the day he watched Mount St Helens erupt, saying that he hadn’t intended to send people off with something bad ringing in their ears, but it was just like being at the dinner table, knowing you oughtn’t say anything nasty, and having something nasty be the only thing you want to talk about. Something else that’s nasty–within five days of Rich’s death, a friend with a backhoe will completely eradicate the ArtYard within a five hour period.   *Edit* As of 2012, the ArtYard is no more.