Peaks Island Spring
On a single rock revealed by the falling mid-tide, they gather—wings outstretched, motionless, drying in the salt air. I tell myself they are like the families who come back year after year to the same stretch of shore, drawn by something they don’t question. A memory. A rhythm. A quiet belonging.
The cormorant has returned, I think—singular, as if it were always the same bird. As if it remembers this exact rock. As if something deep within it calls it back, unerringly, to this place where wings can dry and a season can begin again.
Around it, the air fills with sound—shorebirds calling, songbirds threading their notes through the wind. And then, almost unnoticed, a single porpoise slips through Hussey Sound, its body rising and vanishing, heading out toward the open sea.
The island is waking.
With the birds comes the water’s return—docks creaking back to life, moorings claimed again. And with the water, the people. Seasonal residents. Visitors. Familiar faces, not yet here, but on their way. It’s early still, but the days are stretching—light lingering in the sky as if reluctant to leave.
We are in the in-between.
And it’s tempting—so tempting—to be like the cormorant, perched on its small outcrop of certainty. To stand still. To turn toward the sun. To let the warmth settle into my bones and believe, even for a moment, that I belong as naturally as it does. That I, too, could return without question, without effort, to something eternal.
This Friday, we welcome Luke Bulla to Peaks Island.
His music is a touchstone—carrying us back to early memories in Town Park in Telluride, where we first heard him play alongside Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, with his own band The WPA, and of course with Lyle Lovett and his Lyle Lovett and His Large Band. Those moments stay with you—the kind that settle in quietly and never quite leave.
Now, that same voice—silken, unmistakable—arrives here.
He will play in the sanctuary at New Brackett Church, where every note will rise into the rafters and return to us fuller, warmer, carrying something more than sound. It will fill the room, and if you let it, it will fill you too.
We are standing at the edge of the in-between—those lingering days of spring, not quite one season, not quite the next. And this night, this gathering, feels like a turning. A breath drawn together before summer begins.
This moment. This artist. This music—here, in our community.
Come listen. Come be part of something fleeting and beautiful.
We look forward to welcoming you Friday night.