Vermont Bellows Pipe School

There are few things that I look forward to more than the week spent Smallpiping, Border Piping and camping at Matt Buckley's home in Richmond, Vermont. And this year's week was no disappointment. Imagine a beautiful old house, your tent staked outside under gnarly old Apple trees (the sound of the river the best lullaby), two most gracious and patient hosts, and two most gracious and patient piping teachers, Fin Moore of Scotland and Ryan MacDonald, originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, teaching you 25 of the best tunes you've ever dreamed of hearing. That's the Vermont Bellows Pipe School.

Strangely, the week is at once the most relaxed and the most intense week of the year for me. Work is, mostly, forgotten (what's a lathe?). But the tunes! I thought they'd never stop.

At 9:00am, more or less on the dot, the teaching starts and somewhere around 4pm it stops (with a mad rush into town for lunch in the middle). Things are low key until dinner (communal) and after the always delicious meal a session eventually comes together with sleep happening somewhere between midnight and six in the morning. Rinse and repeat until friday.

Notable non-piping (strictly speaking) events of this week were the beer bottle bagpipe choir (you had to be there) and the Mabou Square set I danced with Ryan, Fin and Sarah at three in the morning with Fin as my dance partner.

Once again I took almost no pictures at Matt's (too busy being relaxed and/or frazzled by tunes). But maybe it's for the best. If you want to see what it's like you'll just have to attend yourself.