Backpacking in the Northern Colorado Rockies, outside of Estes Park, in the late 1960's. Three of us, exhausted tired, womped-out, and asleep for several hours.
Sometime after midnight, we awoke to the most ghastly, spin-tingling, hair-on-end sound and sight imaginable. There was the caterwailing of a thousand cats in the tumultuous frenzy of death curdling melodies....rising from our tent, and looking down across the long alpine meadow, under the full moon and over the 18 inch high foggy dew there was a full kilted bag-piper walking (more like floating) up the trail screeching a bag full of felines that echoed down again from the valley walls. We can close to skitering into the wilderness barefoot and empting our shorts later.
The piper, was a lone refuge from an encampment way down the valley through the trees, well over a mile away....We got dressed, followed him down to a raging bonfire with other pipers, and drank hot buttered rum.....made by plunging a red-hot-rail-road-spike into a mug of sugar, rum and water. We returned in the dawn to our encampment and slept until noon....the two other chaps took up the pipes shortly after the encounter.