Note: I am easily amused, and I laugh when basketball players run into the cheerleaders, when track stars make funny faces while running and when tennis players say “love” before the score. Men prancing around the forests in Scotland, wearing kilts and tossing trees into rivers is something else I laugh at.

A game not well known in America is tossing the caber, but it may be found in Scottish Highland Games across the world.

The concept came from some Scottish lumberjacks. Once trees were cut down in the distant forests, they were thrown into the rivers to float downstream.

Since those foresting days, many people, in many countries, have participated in this sport.

The size of the tree varies in regard to the division in which athletes have entered. The cabers that are used at Tallahassee’s Scottish Highland Games are an average weight of 100 to 150 pounds. They are 18 feet long with a thickness of 9 inches at one end that gradually decreases to 5 at the other.

The game is played with an imaginary clock on the ground. The athletes stand at the six position. The thickest part of the tree is placed in the air as the athlete wraps his arms around the narrow part of the tree. He then tosses it into the air. The goal is to have the tree complete a 180-degree turn in the air and land at the 12 o’clock position. The winning toss is based on two things. One: the nearness to the noon position. Two: the style in which the caber was thrown.

Style is judged on the grip, the grace and the height of the toss.

If no athlete is able to complete a toss, a saw is brought out to cut the tree. This process continues until one athlete can complete a toss.

The caber toss may be seen at the Highland Games that usually take place in the fall in the rolling hills of our own Tallahassee.

When the chance arises to pull on a kilt and pick up a tree to toss at an imaginary clock, go for it.