Still silently watching

One hundred and seventy years ago, a group of families emigrated from Northumberland, just south of the Scottish border, to the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Among those hardy settlers were some of my wife Caroline’s ancestors, folks with names like Messer and Swan and Patterson. (I wouldn’t be surprised if some of your ancestors were in that group as well, Dear Reader.) When they arrived in the New World, they found that conditions weren’t exactly as promising as the nice man from the New Brunswick Land Company, Mr. Nicholson, had said… (Some things never change, eh? I wonder if they were promised sub-prime mortgages, to boot… )

But they persevered, setting up their own settlement in a place called Harvey Station. From there, a part of their descendants scattered, some westward into Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia (including a fellow named Don Messer, a well-known entertainer in Canada a generation ago), some down into the United States and others all the way to Australia.

Fast forward a few generations, add the Internet and its inestimable impact on the study and practice of genealogy, and several of those descendants found each other and organized a big, multifamily reunion. It took place just a few days ago, at the end of August. (Information about all this, which may be of some interest to those of a genealogical/historical bent, can be found at history.earthsci.carleton.ca/harvey/reunion/reunion.htm.

So that’s how Caroline, our daughter Marietta and I found ourselves traveling to Northumberland, and touring the region to see the places where these people had farmed and fished almost two centuries ago. We met in a place called Ford Castle, not far from the fields of Flodden, where Scottish King James IV met a severe defeat—fatal, in fact, both to himself and to Scottish sovereignity—at the hands of the English back in 1513.

One field trip took us up into the weatherworn but still dauntingly steep hills called the Cheviots. After seeing a Herbert homestead called Whitehall in the College Valley, we stumbled upon a monument to Allied fliers from WWII who had crashed in the nearby hills. (You can see the plaque, and some of the scenery, at geograph.org.uk/photo/48569.

On the tops of several of the hills in that area, one can see piles of rocks—cairns, they’re called. These are incredibly ancient, going back to the Bronze Age or possibly earlier. They may have had religious significance; they may have been fortifications, or graves, or watchposts. Seeing them I couldn’t help but think of the line of signal towers near Minas Tirith in “The Lord of the Rings.” I also couldn’t help thinking about how much history those rocks had seen: Scottish and British armies moving back and forth across this land that changed hands so many times, settlers coming and going, and then these descendants returning, only to end up flying into the hillsides.

Now, of course, the Scots and Brits have come to an accommodation and don’t fight any more, except on the rugby pitches and football fields; the intra-European wars have come to an end. I’d imagine the men and the women who built those cairns would find that puzzling, conflict having been so much an integral part of their lives; but perhaps they would also appreciate that after so many centuries people were finally able to figure out ways to live together.

As fate would have it, my thoughts while gazing at that monument, those hills, and those cairns were suddenly interrupted. Three fighter jets came screaming out of the northwest, flying low overhead in tight formation, rattling tourists and sheep and ancient stones alike, barreling towards the southeast, maybe on maneuvers, in the general direction of Iraq… or perhaps Iran.

- SKip Mendler