Scottish day in Ithaca

Today, we stumbled across a celebration of Scottish ancestry in Ithaca. Here in Stewart park in Ithaca, close by the southern end of Lake Cayuga, were scores of people dressed in kilts; a sound of bagpipes and drums, and, a fabulous sense of ancestry writ large.

Across from here, huge willows billowed in the wind at the edge of the lake... it was a magnificent sight.


Cayuga Lake stems north for 35 miles or so... a lake on a scale that dwarfs perspective.
As I write, a red winged blackbird has swooped down to eat the seed that we've placed upon the deck; its red shoulders standing out against its darker black wings.
And, then, suddenly, its gone.


Nicholas

The last time we heard bagpipes on a lakefront we were in Loch Lomond in Scotland...so this was a wonderfully synchronistic and joyous event.


The bagpipes were haunting and the drums cut through the mournful tonality with a rhythm both strange and familiar to my spirit.


Scotland, and in particular, its sacred island of Iona, changed my life forever and I am, without hesitation or questioning, drawn to the sounds and colours and particular raw and barren beauty it holds, I always have been in a way.


Ithaca is different from Iona, much more lush, greener, softer, if you will...but today, at the Highland Festival, I saw that thousands of people in this area have Scottish heritage, the Finger Lakes resonated with the early settlers and they made it their new homeland following the American Revolution. 


It's beauty, the lakes, the deep gorges, the flowing rivers, the waterfalls, these have beckoned me as well...and I am so deeply aware that in moving here, on many many levels I am coming home....


Judy