A new friend was making dinner in between Scrabble games. It turns out Cormac, who is infuriatingly good at Scrabble, can also cook. He was wearing a pink-and-white striped apron and standing at his stove lost in quiet concentration. I watched him open a tub of sour cream, spoon a small amount of it into the mismatched china cups he’d filled with soup and carefully bring them over to the table. Nettle soup, he told us. I raised the delicate cup to my nose. It smelled like a meditation retreat I’d been on once. He’d picked the nettles from his...