"We have a piper down," stated the ad.
For a week, the "Found" classified ran in the newspaper. Yet still nobody claimed the bagpipes Michael Jamieson and his girlfriend Jill Verbickas had discovered on a trail near the 撸奶社区estuary.
The couple noticed the pipes while out on a morning walk. Stuffed into a black backpack, the blowpipe and bass and tenor drones stuck out the top. It was, as Jamieson put it, "an unusual" sight. It's not every day someone loses bagpipes, he noted, and so the search for the piper began.
Verbickas's parents, who were visiting from Victoria, solved the mystery at the Brackendale Fall Fair. There on stage at the head of the lanes of booths loaded with vegetables, fudge and crafts stood kilt-glade pipers. Verickas's parents asked the men in tartan if they knew somebody who was missing an instrument. The answer was the "wandering minstrel."
The minstrel also goes by the name Dax Braby. He grew up in Ontario with his Scottish parents. Proud of their heritage, Braby's parents would take him to events such as the Highland Games, where the bagpipes took centre stage. So, too, did the kilt, but Braby said he needed an excuse to wear one. After a search on Craigslist and $1,000 later, Braby found a set of bagpipes.
In Squamish, Braby got his nickname. Freed from the cold winters and lack of public space in his hometown, 撸奶社区offered endless trails and forest to explore with the bagpipes tucked under his armpit. Braby often walks through maze of pathways on the estuary, at Nexen Beach and roams around any welcoming green space, all the while keeping the high notes of the drones in the air.
"When I start playing, I am in the zone," he said.
He'll walk kilometres without noticing, Braby said, focusing on the melody and his breathing. Much of the music for bagpipes consists of marching tunes, he added, which helps one keep pace.
Braby was out on one of these jaunts when he lost this bagpipes. He had been playing by the water's edge at Nexen and was meandering home when he stopped to peer at Jupiter at the free telescope beside the Cattermole Slough. It was there that he left his bag.
Bagpipes are a personal instrument, Braby said. They are tuned to the blow power of the individual who uses them. 撸奶社区is a small town, with a tight piping community, he noted. But after a week had gone by, Braby was beginning to worry that he had lost his first set of bagpipes forever. But then the call came.
To show his appreciation, Braby gave Jamieson and Verbickas a six-pack of Piper's Pale Ale. With the pipes at home, the wandering minstrel is back.
"I was overjoyed," he said.
