Like many people who grew up on the Leelanau Peninsula, the “little finger” poking out of the Michigan mitten, I spent my boyhood trips to the shore scouring the sand for Petoskey stones: little round rocks covered in a distinctive interlocking honeycomb pattern. I didn’t realize until well into my mid-20s that Petoskeys aren’t a precious metal — they’re actually small pieces of fossilized coral, dating back to the Devonian Period. And they can be found in only one place: northern Michigan. My friends and I polished our Petoskeys and turned them into jewelry for our mothers and aunts and girlfriends. They wore it all, walking around town hunched-over, their bodies heavy with Petoskeys.

It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago as an adult and started dating non-Michiganders that I realized not everybody is beguiled by Great Lake fossils. My first gift to my future wife, a month after we’d started dating, was a Petoskey necklace. She looked at it as if I’d just handed her a macaroni bracelet. “Are you being serious?” she asked.

I was embarrassed by the rejection, but mostly confused. I’d spent my life believing that Michigan contains everything that a person could reasonably want or need. It has rock jewelry, perfect views of the aurora borealis, Mackinac Island fudge, winning college football teams, no toll roads, more than 120 lighthouses and endless beachfront property, stretched across the longest freshwater coastline of any state in the nation. We’re also the only state with hand-based cartography. You can hold up an open palm, point to exactly where you live in Michigan — as long as you live on the Lower Peninsula — and be immediately understood.

Growing up, I was vaguely aware that a world existed outside Michigan, but I assumed it was all variations on Canada. It’s still disconcerting to me how outsiders, even fellow Midwesterners, feel about my home state: that it’s blighted, abandoned, despair-inducing. When I mention that I’m from Michigan, they’ll say things like, “Isn’t that where they poison kids with drinking water?” Or “I don’t know how you survive the winters up there.” Or “It’s amazing that you let both Michael Moore and Ted Nugent live there.”