At the Shrine of the Muse Divine

O Sound the call to dear old Interlochen
Land of the stately pine
Where stalwart hands and loyal ever greet you
Faithful to Auld Lang Syne
Old friends you'll greet, new ones you'll meet
A welcome you'll ever find
So sound the call to dear old Interlochen
Shrine of the Muse Divine!

It was like Woodstock on Grand Traverse Bay for 4 glorious days of music, peace and love at the unofficial 1969-72 Interlochen Arts Academy reunion held August 5-9. A week later would be the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and also the 40th anniversary of the end of my first summer at Interlochen. I was just out of 9th grade and played bass clarinet that summer on a scholarship from the Texas Music Teachers. I was a stranger in paradise there amidst all those gifted youth from all over the world and often felt like I would never keep up with all that talent. I couldn't wait to return the following summer, however, this time playing bassoon on another scholarship from the Texas Music Teachers. I had a lot to learn about the bassoon but made a quantum leap that summer and the next, finally getting into the World Youth Symphony the summer of 1971 and then aspiring to get a scholarship to the Arts Academy for my senior year. I didn't quite believe I would actually get to go to the Academy since I needed virtually a full scholarship. These days the tuition is $42,000 and I don't know how anyone can afford it. Back then it was about $5,000 but that was way more than we could afford. My only hope was that they needed another bassoon badly enough to finance me for the year. I went back to my senior year in Belton the Monday after camp was over and started marching band practice, waiting without much expectation for a couple of weeks before getting the call that I had a scholarship.

I had not been back to Interlochen since the summer of 1974 when I was on staff, working in the library and music library. I was glad to see things have changed only for the better, with several new buildings, including a new concert hall, theater, recital hall/chapel with pipe organ, art building and creative writing building. The Bowl has nice new seating and the old gym which doubled as a concert hall was reborn as a fantastic new library and music library. The only thing I could find to criticize was the women's dorm which seemed rather in need of a facelift.

The week we were there was the week after the Music Camp, which only lasts 6 weeks now (it was 8 weeks in my day), so we had pretty much the run of the place. The marching band camp seemed to stay mostly on the boys side and the adult band camp was always practicing somewhere, so I had a lot of quiet time to wander through all the various sites, some of which I had never seen since they were off limits in camp and academy days. The high school girls camp brought back so many great memories, as did the high school boys. Somehow everywhere I went I ran into inspiration and encouragement, from the words carved into a picnic table ("I can do all things through Him who gives me strength"), to the Linus cartoons with Lucy's laments about falling in love with a musician, which were present also in my day, to the pictures and mementos in Giddings Concourse, which has that same smell it had 37 years ago. There is a timeless feeling about Interlochen that I had almost forgotten, the pure clean pine air (no smoking allowed on campus), the almost deafening quiet save for the wind in the pines and gentle lapping of the lake.

There were about 45 people there from that era who had all reconnected through Facebook and decided to get together unofficially. We rented a recording studio in Traverse City for two nights and about half of us played, sang or otherwise entertained in what was truly a transcendental experience. I never expected to hear so many great tunes done so awesomely. What a lot of gifted geezers we have among us! Truly amazing talent which was streamed in a live webcast and is now being made into a DVD.

The last night we got back from the concert about midnight and decided to make s'mores on the beach behind Kresge. We had a few bottles of alcohol also, but were busted by the security guy for drinking on campus shortly after we got there. We had to pour some of it out on the sand, but a couple of bottles survived and we continued the party after he left until 5:00 when the same security guy came back and advised us that a storm was fast approaching. By this time the last bottle had been drained and we were all getting very silly and would have probably sat there and gotten drenched if he hadn't insisted we leave. We had been watching the lightning get closer and closer from over Lake Michigan and made it out just in time before the heavens opened.

The next morning was Sunday and after only a couple of hours of sleep we got up and had a spirit circle at Cindi's beautiful cabin, where the heavens opened again as we shared our thoughts and experiences from the reunion and what Interlochen and the people we have met there have meant to our lives. I struggled through my own unexpected tears of joy to express my gratitude for the gift of Interlochen in my life, and thoughts of all my newfound friendships sustained me in a very long and agonizing trip back to reality.

Moonrise over Lake Wahbekaness