Evelyn Camidge began learning the bagpipes when she was nine.
She happened upon a video of someone playing the instrument and thought it looked fun, so she decided to try her hand at the traditional Scottish woodwind.
“As I’ve gotten older, I realized that I have Scottish heritage, and it’s become a huge part of my life,” said Camidge, now a senior at Pembroke Academy. “I love learning about where I came from, my heritage, but it’s also become an escape, going to the New Hampshire Highland Games and other Highland Games around the East Coast.”
As the New Hampshire Highland Games & Festival celebrates five decades this year, Camidge and her pipe band will play in the music competition and set what she hopes will be a new Guinness world record for the largest number of people playing bagpipes together — more than 333 people at once.
The multi-day event takes over Loon Mountain each September for a celebration of all things Scottish: bagpipes, kilts, whiskey, dancing, outdoor competitions, history and more.
The Highland Games, based on traditional Scottish gatherings, originated in New Hampshire in 1975, when dozens of members of Clan Murray gathered for a picnic at Loon. No one knew at the time that their informal celebration of togetherness would eventually grow into a weekend-long festival garnering as many as 45,000 attendees.
“It’s a sense of family. I think you go and nobody knows each other, but it’s a built-in community,” said Camidge. “And you know that everybody there is there for the same reasons and wants to have a good time.”
This year’s festival takes place from Friday, Sept. 19 through Sunday, Sept. 21. Nonprofit organization NH SCOT runs the event aimed at bringing together people with Scottish roots across New Hampshire and New England and introducing the culture to those without ties to Scotland who simply want to learn more.
Many festival-goers even travel down from Canada to attend, according to Program Director Andrew MacLeay. He attributes people’s love for the event to the large Scottish diaspora that exists in the North America.
“What we’ve heard a lot when we have people coming from Scotland, native Scots, there seems to be much more of a connection and celebration of these cultural things here in America than there even is, in some cases, in Scotland,” MacLeay said. “So I think just people love having that connection, specifically, a lot of pride around being Scottish.”
Beyond Highland dance and bagpipe performances, strength competitions, history seminars and food and craft vendors, the Games feature a Clan Village with over 30 different clans represented and geneological information available to help people trace their own roots by last name. For the first time this year, there also will be a geneologist on site to further help people delve into their ancestral pasts.
For Robin Stiles, who organizes the Clan Village each year, connecting with her own heritage has proven particularly powerful.
“To be able to follow my family connections back, it gives me a sense of purpose, knowing what they went through making that ocean voyage and coming to a new country, fighting for that country. It’s just that sense of awareness of self,” said Stiles, who lives in Boscawen.
Stiles always had a love of history but delved more into her ancestry as an adult.
Attending her first Highland Games in 1992, she found her grandfather’s last name, Young, in a book tracing the lineage of Scottish clans. She embarked on a mission to uncover as much as she could relating to her family’s history. Now, she hopes to help others do the same.
“You don’t have to be Scottish to love the Games,” she said. “And then you can get surprised. You might not think that there’s a Scottish connection, but the Scottish people were such a force along the entire east coast of the United States, that people would be surprised, if they look into their history, that they — not all of them, but a good portion of them — might have a Scottish ancestor that they don’t know about.”
Lois Meredith, who first attended the games 42 years ago, loves the sense of togetherness that people find there.
“It’s like going home,” she said. “You see people that you haven’t seen for a whole year. You meet people that you feel a nice in connection to because you have a shared heritage and you have a shared interest. It’s just a wonderful gathering of people.”
Meredith, who lives in Concord, began as a volunteer alongside her family and eventually started working full-time for NH SCOT as their finance director, a position she has held for 22 years.
“My first and most wonderful impression of the games was the camaraderie of everybody, whether you were Stuart, whether you were a Murray Clan member or not, everybody was welcome,” said Meredith.
Beyond the Highland Games, NH SCOT strives to honor Scottish culture year-round through Highland dance classes, bagpipe lessons, New Years and Beltane celebrations and more.
To further its mission, the organization recently purchased the old YMCA Camp Spaulding in Concord. The 57-acre property, to be renamed Camp Caledonia, will become a cultural center for Scottish heritage in New Hampshire.
As part of the 50th anniversary of the Games, attendees will have the opportunity to record messages sharing their memories of the event at phones located throughout the Loon grounds during the weekend. The nonprofit is also working on a time capsule to bury at Camp Caledonia.
As the Games continue to grow, Camidge hopes that bagpiping, which has become a cherished part of her life, will similarly evolve.
“Women weren’t allowed to compete in piping until the late ’70s, and we’re still a minority by a lot,” she said.
Camidge wants to gather all the female pipers this year and take a group photo to share the power of women playing the instrument.
Stiles, too, has found herself thinking about the future of the event and the connecton to its location.
“If the game continue to grow, we might outgrow our space. But right now, Loon’s home. I love the mountains, the valleys. I’ve been lucky enough to visit Scotland twice, and Loon reminds me a lot of Scotland,” she said.
For more information on the New Hampshire Highland Games & Festival, visit https://nhscot.org.