There’s a moment before the pipes strike when the field holds its breath. In those heartbeats, you can feel whether a gathering remembers what it is. In Tallahassee, after so many silent years, the answer has been yes, clear, stubborn, resonant. Celebrating year four, the Games here weren’t relaunched as a spectacle; they were rebuilt as a gathering. That distinction matters to anyone who cares about where our traditions are headed next.
This isn’t an article to explain Highland games to the uninitiated. It’s an invitation to those who already know the sound of a clean pick on a heavy caber, who can tell by the hands whether a thrower will shy the stone or drive it like their ancestors are watching. It’s written for people who can sense when a festival is slowly becoming a theme park, and who still believe a chief’s gathering, even on new soil, can light the old fire while being as unique as the host themselves.
Recover the heartbeat
Why bring a dormant Games back at all? Because in the diaspora you either let the flame gutter, or you shoulder wind and keep it. You don’t watch your kin on their deathbed saying “do it” and not take on the task. The Tallahassee Highland Games returns year four, not to replicate a standardized program, but to restore the older logic of the field: a host sets the tone; the land and its people shape the tests; and the gathering serves the community that carries it… clans, families, and the young who need to see strength up close. That is why this revival has felt less like a product launch and more like a promise kept.
The first principle was simple: recover the heartbeat. Stones. Not props, but trials that carry the weight of the land itself. In the beginning, we poured our own, concrete atlas stones and honest, because if you’re reviving a tradition, you start with your hands, not a shipment. Each of those early stones was cast in the same spirit as the old masons: shape what you have until the real one’s answer.
Now we’re hunting for them… the old white anchors that lie half-buried along country drives and fence lines, the quartz and limestone boulders that once marked roads and homes in Leon County. Those are the ones we want to lift, the ones that have already held their ground for a hundred years. We’ve even found some at Apalachee Regional Park. Perfect to pull from the soil and make our own challenge stones, unique to this field and to this land. Because every true Highland gathering deserves a stone that remembers where it stands.
The second principle: guard the caber. A caber toss is the great truth-teller of a games. Technique without courage is useless; courage without discipline is chaos. Hosting the International Highland Games Federation National Championship (IHGF) means inviting the standard to test you instead of you pretending to meet it. It’s a statement to athletes and to Scotland alike: when we say “Highland,” we mean it.
Third: put the clans back at the center. That means more than tents and signage. It means removing barriers, so culture isn’t pay-to-play and making room for actual teaching – genealogy, language, music, and the quiet work of transmission. In Tallahassee, clan and society presence isn’t a bolt-on; it’s the spine. Free participation for clans is not our charity; it’s alignment with the first principles. The point is to convene a people, not monetize a backdrop. To give them space to step out of the tent, show their tartans with pride and invite those who become kin and our next generations who honor the call.
The fourth principle is harder to talk about because it asks us to be honest about drift. Many events, especially successful ones, end up smoothing their edges until one looks very much like the next. But the older pattern of the Highlands ran on difference: river stones here, sea-wind there; a chief who prized his 400lb challenge stone more than the hammer; a glen with no wood for a truly monstrous caber and so a different trial altogether. That refusal to be interchangeable is part of what made the tradition durable. Tallahassee’s organizers have been explicit about resisting the temptation to become yet another “festival format.” They’re choosing curation over bloat, athlete-first fieldcraft over prop-work, and a hospitality culture that looks more like a feast than a VIP upsell. (Yes, there is a proper gala and whisky dinner—because hosts should host, and a night’s table can do more for a community than a month of posts.)
That feast mentality carries onto the field. When Francis Brebner is on the mic, seven-time world caber champion and President of the IHGF… the crowd doesn’t just get noise; they get standard, story, and pace. Announcing becomes stewardship. It’s a subtle difference, but you can feel it in how athletes respond and how children watch. Even the spectators roar as “the loudest crowd I’ve ever seen” delights in this new, yet oh so old tradition. The layout has been redrawn to serve that experience; clear sightlines, flow that respects the throw, and vantage points where new families can catch their first goosebumps without being jostled out of it.
Strength Without Borders
If the field is the heart, the year is the body with the soul of our loved ones quite literally imbued in it. Plenty of gatherings light a weekend and vanish. Tallahassee built a structure around the Games to keep the muscle working when the banners come down. Team Tallahassee (our nonprofit arm) coaches, equips, and funds athletes year-round. In practical terms, that pint you buy isn’t disappearing into a pit; it becomes fuel for the next thrower, the next travel stipend, the next kid who realizes they’re built for this. “Strength Without Borders” isn’t a line… It’s our policy. It signals to Scotland that this corner of the map understands stewardship.
There’s also a decision here to take heritage seriously without taking oneself too seriously. Three stages run music, dance, and heritage programming that teaches as it entertains. Children design tartans, build beards, test themselves at the Wee Highland Games area, and learn that culture is something you do with your hands. If you’ve ever worried that the next generation will inherit a Pinterest board instead of a living craft, the antidote is watching a kid heft a mini-caber with that stubborn set of the jaw we all recognize.
Some will ask whether television coverage and modern marketing dull the edge. Whether our partner podcast and unique branding signal something else. They can confuse, if you forget who you are. But when you treat the camera and mic as a witness rather than a judge, it amplifies what’s real. Stones of Strength filmed for cable isn’t dilution; it’s proof that the fire still burns hot enough to be seen from far away.
And when the co-branded Ology Brewing Company; Scottish red ale turns up in a Florida grocery, it may raise an eyebrow… until you realize that every can is an echo, carrying the name of the Games into new hands. The point isn’t to make the tradition fashionable; it’s to keep it fluent. When the field and our people stay honest, the signal will travel.
And then there is the matter of honor. Hosting the Clan Graham Society’s Annual General Meeting isn’t just calendar business; it’s a declaration that this revived gathering is honored to carry our ancestral weight. A chieftain’s presence changes the air. It anchors the weekend in lineage, in obligation, in that particular silence before the toast when you remember who you stand for. For a diaspora games, that is not small. It’s a sign that the old structure recognizes itself in the new and holds value in their people wherever they may be.
Place matters. Apalachee Regional Park is famous for cross-country… thin spikes on red clay, wind across open ground. Turning it into a Highland field isn’t a gimmick; it’s a metaphor for how tradition migrates. The same terrain that measures endurance at the World Cross Country will now measure courage under a caber. The same terrain now honored by the very sports like modern Track and Field, events that our great heritage inspired. That juxtaposition says what needs saying about diaspora culture: the roots can travel if the hands are willing.
The field is calling again
So, what should those of us in Scotland make of this American revival? Judge us by the old tests, not facade.
Does the field honor the athlete and the throw?
Do the stones belong to the place?
Are the clans convened to teach and to welcome, not just to decorate?
Is the feast a real feast, the hospitality real hospitality?
Does the year between the weekends matter? Coaching, building kit, and the quiet work of keeping people in the sport.
Does it resist becoming generic? Yes, and all on purpose, driven by the heart of our Team.
There are things to watch, always. Standard must be held. Craft must be taught. Commerce must be kept in harness. Cows, horses and folk didn’t just show up without driving economy. But if you’re looking for signs of life, you can hear them in Tallahassee, Florida. The pipes come in, the athletes square, the crowd shifts forward. The field breathes again.
For those of us who worry that the tradition is dwindling, maybe the answer isn’t to harden into nostalgia or chase novelty. Maybe it’s to remember how our ancestors built gatherings that felt like themselves and recalling that difference, not uniformity, was part of the genius. The Tallahassee Highland Games have chosen that path: not bigger for its own sake, but truer for ours.
If you come, don’t come to be entertained. Come to stand where the old and the new shake hands. Come to watch a kilted stranger pick a length of timber and make a promise with it. Come to see whether your own hands have been idle too long. The field is calling again. Answer how our people always have… by showing up, lifting what’s in front of you, celebrating our culture and uniqueness while leaving the ground better than we found it.
Experience the 2026 Tallahassee Highland Games at Apalachee Regional Park February 7 & 8th, 2026. For further details visit: www.tallyhighlandgames.com
Text by: Ryan May.
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