Quote Originally Posted by Bellfree View Post
i'm a newbie, so i hope folks will cut me some slack at the naivety of my questions. i mean, i'm not generally a joiner, but i enlisted in X Marks the Spot because i have a few questions that i figured experts might have some perspective i can learn from.

the first is, is there an acceptable/practical way of wearing a kilt while riding a horse?

i can hear the laughs or scoffs now. so on to the next.

do others have the same reaction i do to wearing the kilt? it resonates with me.

for instance, looking at a sporran when i was buying my first kilt this fall at Geoffrey (Tailor) some memory sparked. it reminded me of a small leather pouch my dad had given me when i was 12 in which to put money while i was collecting from customers of my newspaper route. it's a pouch i have kept for 43 years and which dad had been given as a boy and so had to have kept himself for a good number of years before handing it to me. a simple leather pouch which we both kept for so many decades, long after its utility was exhausted, suggests that it tapped into something wordlessly felt, somehow remembered, that leather pouch , same shape in leather, to be worn from the waist, as a sporran. maybe it was someone else's memory, an ancient greater grandfather's, but that memory had been handed down to me like the leather pouch from my father. and so the sporran of my new kilt outfit felt not so much bought as reclaimed.

wearing the kilt feels just as natural. ok, maybe i'm nuts, but what say others?
Ok, I have nothing to say about horseback riding (as i"m not good at it) and the kilt does not resonate with me as it does with others.

On the subject of Genetic Memory I will weigh in .

When I was a kid growing up in a relatively flat place I used to go to an area that was rolling hills and pasture land. Very steep hills covered with cow pastures. I had no idea at the time why I was so attracted to the area (it was near my childhood home with relatives living nearby). It just was.

My first trip to Dumfries last January when I was on the train "chuntering" through the countryside between Glasgow and Dumfries I was astounded to find that the countryside we were rolling through was EXACTLY like the few acres back home that I had loved for years.

I have been laughed at and ridiculed (not that it makes a difference) on this board for mentioning it before but yes, I believe in genetic memory and no matter what anyone else says, I've experienced it.

You just can't tell me that all the Scottish descendants around the world who have a longing for Scotland and all things Scottish are not a bit experiencing the same thing.

Ok, well I'll just for now.