Halfway to the Pole
Near Minneapolis St Paul, Minnesota
This boulder sits on an invisible line that circles the whole planet. You are standing on the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude, very nearly the midpoint between the equator and the North Pole.
The geometry is tidy. The equator is zero degrees, the pole is ninety, and forty-five splits the difference. From this rock it is roughly three thousand one hundred miles to the equator in one direction and the same distance to the North Pole in the other. Ramsey County surveyors set the marker and a bronze tablet here in nineteen forty to make the point.
There is a quiet civic boast attached to it. The Twin Cities form the largest urban area in North America to straddle this halfway line, so every time you drive across it you are crossing the middle of the Northern Hemisphere.
