The life

what are your intentions?

On New Year’s Day we cooked our usual Hoppin’ John, collards, and cornbread—but instead of cooking the peas on the stove we sauteed and simmered them outside, over an open fire. We’d borrowed a cast-iron cauldron from Mamie (I think it used to sit on our wood stove, back in the log cabin), which fit a heavy glass lid I had, and used a cast-iron cook stand that Richard and Harriet gave me for Christmas.

First we built a fire in our little fire pit, and set the cook stand in the center. We added oil and butter to the black pot, then when the butter was melted added chopped onions, salt, herbs, and spices. When the onions were softened, minced garlic and green pepper. Then two containers of the rehydrated black-eyed peas you can get this time of year, and some allspice Bea ground with a pestle. A little more salt, pepper, two quarts of vegetable broth, and the lid went on to simmer. Harriet and I read magazines in the hammock while the fire crackled—there’s an excellent profile of Willie Nelson in this week’s New Yorker—getting up every now and again to taste the delicious, smoky broth with a wooden spoon.

This is the life, I thought. I want to cook like this all the time, or maybe once a week. I want to read magazine articles that are exactly as good as this instead of Signal texts on my phone about whatever terrible new thing is happening. I would like to be just this patient with my children, who love when I am so close to them our hips touch. In my mind, I was cosplaying as Louise, our beloved camp director at Clapping Hands Farm, where I’d first seen soup made this way. Louise’s farm is down a long dirt road. It has crabapple and persimmon and fig trees, large meadows and small fairy forests, and no electricity or running water. Its gathering spaces naturally make circles of tree stumps, benches, or large stones. Most of the time, some combination of young and old and in-the-middle folks gather there. Everyone plays. Everyone laughs. Everyone makes art.

By the time the beans were softened it was nearly dark. We were waiting for our neighbors, who were returning from the beach, and who had the idea that we could write our 2026 intentions on slips of paper and add them to the fire. In my head I made a list of all the things I would do differently this year—play badminton and go mountain biking again, stop looking at my phone, stop refreshing the screen, be more patient, be a more creative teacher. Finish the books.

It was getting chilly, and Bea came out in a T-shirt and the jeans that always seem to be cropped on her a week after I buy them.

“Don’t you need a jacket?” I said.

She shrugged. “There’s a fire. It’s warm enough.”

I told her about the idea of writing intentions, and asked her if she had thought of any resolutions for the New Year.

Bea considered for a moment, then said, “I think I’d like to stay the same.”

A perfect answer! Inappropriate for someone like me, who lacks the purity of heart of a new middle schooler surrounded by all the change temptations that surround a middle schooler. But maybe there are things I want to keep doing, muscles I strengthened in 2025 that I can continue to work. More hikes. More protests. More learning new things. Just the right amount of paying attention to all that threatens (what is the right amount?).

Here is what Bob Dylan wrote about Willie Nelson, when journalist Alex Abramovich asked about him:

How can you make sense of him? How would you define the indefinable or the unfathomable? What is there to say? Ancient Viking Soul? Master Builder of the Impossible? Patron poet of people who never quite fit in and don’t much care to? Moonshine Philosopher? Tumbleweed singer with a PhD? Red Bandana troubadour, braids like twin ropes lassoing eternity? What do you say about a guy who plays an old, battered guitar that he treats like it’s the last loyal dog in the universe? Cowboy apparition, writes songs with holes that you can crawl through to escape from something. Voice like a warm porchlight left on for wanderers who kissed goodbye too soon or stayed too long. I guess you can say all that. But it really doesn’t tell you a lot or explain anything about Willie. Personally speaking I’ve always known him to be kind, generous, tolerant and understanding of human feebleness, a benefactor, a father and a friend. He’s like the invisible air. He’s high and low. He’s in harmony with nature. And that’s what makes him Willie.

We listened to Willie songs while I boiled the collards on the stove, then kindled a new fire to heat it all together.

Later we watched, with our neighbors, the final episode of Stranger Things, with its aged-down actors and CGI monsters. I’m sorry if this is a spoiler but all of the major characters, and even most of the minor ones, survive every battle.

We ate every bit of Hoppin’ John on our plates. I finished the leftovers yesterday.

How about you, Frog Troublers? Are there strengths from 2025, a decidedly rough year, that you want to take into 2026? Are there new things you’re trying?

Lots of love from us, and Happy New Year.