My Smoky Pilgrimage to Helen’s BBQ

Fewer than 10,000 people live in dusty Brownsville, TN. It would be easy to blow right past downtown if you were, say, trying desperately to find anything at all worth listening to on the radio. But even if you did, you still wouldn’t miss the town’s biggest attraction, Helen’s BBQ, which sits a mile removed,…

Accidental Chef in the Wild West

PORTAL, AZ – As if we were all Wild West outlaws lowering our bandanas for the first time, my neighbors in tiny Portal, Arizona and I are finally seeing one another’s faces. Never having seen their mouths, I made many of them extravagant Thanksgiving and December holiday dinners, alongside my friend Zola, who’s pushing 90…

Foraging for Thimbleberries in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

COPPER HARBOR, MI — It embarrasses me, after all the things I’ve found to recommend the Keweenaw Peninsula, that it was an overpriced jar of jam that first launched me on my journey here. Or at least I thought it was overpriced at the time: $25 for what looked to be one cup of jam,…

A Keweenaw Red Rocks?

Aaron Rogers envisions an amphitheater carved in stone & big-name bands at East Bluff Bike Park.