Food has always held a special place in my life. I carry frozen cheesecakes on winter expeditions, not only because they're caloric but also because they don't freeze hard, allowing me to enjoy a bite without chipping my teeth. Once, I even ate the same dead catfish boiled over a fire for three days. It was an experience that taught me about my preferences - I love cardamom, snap peas, and Asian pears. But I also have a strong aversion to raw tomatoes, a trait I attribute to growing up near a ketchup factory in California. Tomatoes were everywhere, sticking to my flip-flops and rotting in the sun.

My Husband's Culinary Adventure

My husband, on the other hand, was raised by an epicurean grandfather who loved to drive hours one-way for frog legs, bouillabaisse, and a pastry shaped like a bird's nest. Now that we have twin babies, he wants them to appreciate good food, so he's learning to cook. In his pursuit of this goal, he discovered the Milkweed Inn in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. This remote bed and breakfast is where superstar chef Lane Regan (formerly Iliana) cooks foraged ingredients for a select group of guests in exclusive weekends that sell out years in advance. This year, my husband has been helping out at the Inn, building a woodshed and tending to colonies of bees. In return, Lane offered us a slot on a last-minute November weekend, and my husband, excited to share a place he loves, gave the slot to me.

The Inn's Location and Ambiance

The Inn lies about a mile from two-lane Highway 13 as the crow flies and 25 miles by unmarked dirt road. Guests arrive in a caravan. It's a log cabin with a central parlor that doubles as a kitchen, adorned with Pendleton blankets, paintings of foxes, and Chef's three Michelin stars. Tonight's dinner may not be the star of the weekend (that would be Saturday's 15-course tasting menu), but as guests gather around the three small tables, there's an air of anticipation. I scoot in at the corner table with two couples, dodging a silky lump that turns out to be a Shih Tzu named Clemmie. George, a nine-year-old Newfoundland, sprawls like a bear rug by the hearth.

The First Night's Delights

Host Rebecca, a breezy redhead with pigtails and a warm expression, brings dishes of savoy cabbage with pine flower miso and milkweed flower vinegar. The flavors are meaty, complex, and to my inexperienced palate, ineffable. I feel like a phony for eating it without knowing how to name the tastes. But when a neighbor mentions wild mushrooms, I feel a glimmer of confidence. By the bread course, a thick warm sourdough with tangy goat milk butter and honey, I start to relax. The trout in herb gribiche is fleshy and tastes like the lake in the best way, and dessert - a profiterole with spruce ice cream and chaga cookie top that cracks into patches like the spots on an amanita - offers a nearly musical experience of bliss.

The Next Day's Food and Leisure

By first breakfast - banana-walnut bread with salt and butter - the guests are already familiar with each other. They're midwestern foodies, adventurous - two retired couples, a pair of restaurant owners, and a data scientist and millennial geriatrician from Madison, Wisconsin. Chef Lane bustles in the kitchen, answering questions and offering guidance on the wood-fired sauna. They're slim and soft-spoken, with a teal moth tattooed on their neck, wings filling the open collar of their tucked-in wool flannel. Second breakfast is tacos on green tortillas, tinged with weeds picked that week.The day is filled with food and leisure. Some folks wander to the Sturgeon River, descending a trailless slope, while others knit, hike, or read. I sit briefly in the loft and overhear snippets of conversation. One person shares a story about getting stung by a hornet on their butt cheek and having someone suck out the venom. It's these moments that make the experience at the Milkweed Inn truly unique.

Lunch and the Foraged Food Experience

Lunch starts with a salad of fennel and carrot in two ways - shaved raw and blanched and marinated in lemon, accompanied by moose garum and egg white aminos with marinated white beans and garnished with chamomile. The flavor is multisensory and euphoric; I feel it in my arms. There's something sweet on my tongue, something tart on the sides of my mouth, and a hint of smoke that surprises me. Cooking resident Jade jokes that they fed the moose firewood, but it feels like there's a connection to the natural world in every bite. Foraged food isn't just about bringing people into wildness; it's about bringing wildness into our very mouths.

The Magic of Milkweed Inn

As an adventurer, I often struggle to entice people outside because they fear the lows - bugs, cold, bears, isolation, and using leaves as toilet paper. But Milkweed Inn pulls magic, calling new people into the Northwoods. It shows that we can have nature inside us, even in the most conservative sense. A tapeworm is a reminder that our bodies are ecosystems too. This place turns fear into pleasure. Savoring a wild lion's mane mushroom is just as engaging with wildness as spotting one in the woods, and it's more accessible to most.I realized that my lack of engagement with good food was partly because I thought myself above it. I've always prided myself on enduring the lack of comfort, but food has the power to turn a need into a gift. I've spent decades chasing wilderness when it could always be right here - on my plate, in my mouth, in the animal body that I am.