“What do you know about tractors,” teased Ellen, my Minnesota friend. She intuited that a story about farm equipment would seem as familiar to me as Martians landing on my suburban front lawn. Ellen lives in Duluth, a port city on Lake Superior near the Superior National Forest. “Duluth is Bob Dylan’s hometown,” she once said to reassure me that Minnesotans are not hicks. She’d perceptively picked up on my East Coast elitism.