First Morning on the Porch

If I’d known the ocean could sound like this, I might have come sooner.
Back home in Pine Mountain, the mornings are all about the soft hum of cicadas, the thud of someone’s screen door, and the occasional crowing rooster who can’t tell time. Here in Willowford, the world wakes up differently.

It’s a mix of sounds I don’t quite know how to arrange in my head yet — the clink of metal on metal from somewhere down on the docks, the slap of water against wood pilings, a gull’s sharp, laughing cry that sounds like he’s in on a joke I haven’t heard yet. There’s the low thrum of a boat engine coming to life, then fading into the distance. And underneath it all, a smell so thick and strange it almost feels like you could chew it — part salt, part bait fish, part… something I can’t name but think might just be “Maine.”

I’m wrapped in a sweater that smells faintly of cedar from the closet here at Gull’s View, nursing a mug of coffee so hot it fogs my glasses. The harbor below looks like it’s been painted in watercolors — all silvery blues and soft golds where the early light catches the ripples.

Salty, the one-footed seagull who greeted me yesterday afternoon, has taken up his post on the railing. He watches me with that sideways bird eye, as if weighing whether I’m worth the trouble. I tear off a corner of toast and offer it — he takes it without thanks, then hops back to his spot like we’ve made some kind of deal.

Back in Pine Mountain, a morning like this would’ve been full of obligations: calls to return, laundry to fold, someone asking if I could “just bring a pie” to whatever was happening that evening. Here, the only thing on my list is to sit still long enough for the fog to lift and see what the day wants to be.

I can already hear Dolly’s Chowder House opening up down the street — the squeak of its old door hinges carrying through the still air. Someone told me last night she makes blueberry muffins “so good they’ll make you call your mama.” I’m not sure what that says about them, but I guess I’m about to find out.

For now, I take another sip of coffee, watch the harbor yawn itself awake, and think maybe, just maybe, I’ve landed exactly where I need to be.

Suspendisse tempus ligula tincidunt efficitur convallis. Cras dignissim blandit libero pharetra tempus. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed auctor justo vel finibus pretium. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus gravida leo placerat, molestie orci in, semper risus. Duis ac erat a ex gravida mattis. Quisque eleifend elit at eleifend fermentum. Vestibulum imperdiet, mauris ut pharetra accumsan, nisi erat varius metus, sed commodo nisl nisi a ipsum.