I just moved to Point Dume and I’m like a little kid discovering new things and having adventurers. My latest toy is “Breakfast at the Sand Castle.”

In my sleep I drive there at six-thirty, mumble the word “breakfast” to the guard and stumble into the nearly empty restaurant.

The place takes on a whole different atmosphere, no longer a dinner house but a beach diner. Only the early risers are there: Business people, artists, joggers, boaters, construction workers.

When the waitress comes, I’m smiling, still remembering the gulls in the parking lot. One was announcing to the others that it was his paper bag, and whatever was in it was his!

On this grey overcast morning the sea and sky are the same soft slate color, sky blending into water almost imperceptibly.

My coffee is giving off its wake-up aroma. I look out to see a flat motor boat skim across the skin of the sea like an insect, one lone fisherman aboard, hurrying to his favorite school.

Just off shore three yachts are bedded down, sails wrapped in sleep. One boat with its jib unfurled like one open eye, half-awake.

I gaze out at the waves, they call to me, breaking on Big Dume’s beach – yet unknown to me the secret password that gains me entrance to its secret and its power. I will find an answer there.

I turn to my left toward the pier, like a centipede, static, frozen movement, knees locked, sea gulls dosing on its shoulders, keeping an eye out for pirates.

My mood changes as I see the seagulls trot across the sand, such clowns!

Ah! A fish jumps out of the water, makes a hairpin turn, an upside down “U”, then back in again.

I look up just outside the window to see a pigeon drinking from a spout that sticks out of the roof. Each in succession has his own way of twisting for a drink.

Now I see activity over at a yacht, red shirt and blue shirt climb into their lifeboat and motor toward us to come in for breakfast.

A solo cormorant fishes in the shallow water while I discuss his identity in Spanish with my neighbors at the next table. It looks like a duck, but it’s not a duck, it’s a — cormorant. How do you say that in Spanish?

If you’re early enough you can get a seat by the window, and then you get to see the pelicans! They are often in groups of five out beyond the waves. There they are now, getting into position, right in front of me, facing me. Poker-faced. Then one sails like an iceboat to join another group.