One Year of Being the Brushy Mountain Outlaws

One year ago today, Brushy Mountain Squares became official.

Which is still a little hard to believe, considering the whole thing started with a text message and a joke.

If you’ve read our origin story, you know how it happened. George Hawkins and Angie Wittwer were on their way home from square dance class one night while group chatting with a few friends. Somewhere in that conversation, someone suggested, “You should start your own club.”

Then came the name.

Brushy Mountain Squares.

Because, apparently, we acted like outlaws.

We laughed about it. We joked about being the outlaws of square dancing. And then, because apparently none of us knows when to stop a joke, we decided to actually do it.

Within days, we had two full squares of dancers ready to join us. Jason and I built a webpage, the idea became official, and suddenly Brushy Mountain Squares wasn’t just a funny name somebody had thrown into a text conversation.

It was a real square dance club.

And now here we are.

One year later…

Looking back at that first year, it’s amazing to think about just how much has happened since that original conversation.

We’ve danced. A lot.

We’ve learned new calls, welcomed new dancers, and helped people find their way around the square.

We’ve had plenty of moments when absolutely nobody knows what’s happening and we just keep going anyway.

That’s part of the fun.

We’ve traveled to dances, conventions, and other clubs, proving that being a Brushy Mountain Square doesn’t necessarily mean staying anywhere near Brushy Mountain. We’ve made new friends along the way and discovered just how big (and wonderfully connected) the square dance community really is.

We’ve celebrated. We’ve laughed. We’ve eaten. We’ve probably walked considerably more steps than anyone would expect from an activity that involves standing in roughly the same place for several hours.

And we’ve made memories that I don’t think any of us could have predicted when this started.

We’ve also built something that feels like a movement.

Brushy Mountain Squares has developed its own personality over the past year. The outlaw theme started as a joke, but somewhere along the way it became a pretty good description of what we’re trying to be.

We’re not interested in taking ourselves too seriously.

We want to dance well, but we also want to have fun doing it. We want to learn, but we don’t expect anyone to be perfect. We want experienced dancers to have somewhere to dance and new dancers to feel welcome. We want to travel, meet people, support other clubs, and bring a little bit of that Brushy Mountain spirit wherever we go.

And most importantly, we want people to enjoy being around each other.

Because that’s what has surprised me most about this first year.

The club isn’t really the website. It isn’t the name. It isn’t the flyers or the lessons or even the dances.

It’s the people.

It’s the people who showed up when this was brand new. The people who took a chance on a club that didn’t even exist yet. The people who helped with lessons, filled squares, invited friends, traveled with us, helped us, encouraged us, and kept showing up.

It’s the people who have made Brushy Mountain Squares feel less like something we created and more like something we all built together.

And that’s pretty incredible when you remember that this whole thing started because somebody jokingly called us outlaws.

One year ago, we had an idea.

Today, we have a club.

We have dancers. We have friends. We have stories. And, apparently, we have a reputation to maintain.

So happy first anniversary to Brushy Mountain Squares, The Accidental Outlaws of Square Dancing.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of our first year, whether you’ve been with us from that very first conversation or you’ve only recently wandered into our square.

We’re glad you’re here.

And if this is what we managed to do in our first year, I have a feeling year two is going to be interesting.

After all…

Once an outlaw, always an outlaw.