Complex Numbers

Far from Home

What is the farthest you've ever been from the place you call "home?"

Ever wonder what's meant by "halfway around the world?"

Like, there's a spot in the Indian Ocean (I looked it up on Google Earth some time ago) which is exactly 180 degrees opposite my house. If I could walk in any direction at a steady pace, it wouldn't matter which direction I went in; they all result in the same time or distance to that spot. It is the south pole to my north pole, or vice-versa.

Should we consider that spot "halfway around the world" for me? Because if I were able to walk to it, and did so, but then kept walking, eventually I'd end up back home - all the way around the world. And yet, every other spot on the Earth's surface is closer, by definition, so every other spot would be less than halfway around the world. After I passed my personal South Pole, I'd be 3/8 of the way around, then 1/4, then 1/8, and all of the infinite points in between. I'd never be 3/4 of the way around the world, even though I'll have walked that far, and more.

There's no paradox here, of course; it's purely a matter of the inconsistency and imprecision of written language. Mathematics would describe the journey with far less ambiguity. To really answer the prompt question, we'd have to define exactly what was meant by "farthest," and probably "home" also.

Even defining "farthest" simply as "greatest distance along a Great Circle route" and "home" as "the place you live most of the time," perception can be thrown off by something as simple as a map. It is impossible to accurately represent every feature of a sphere on a flat map. Something is always distorted. With the most common (Mercator) projection, it's mostly distance and size; for example, a Mercator map makes it look like Greenland is bigger than South America, when it's simply not.

Distance is affected, too. Look at a Mercator map, and it appears that the closest point in the continental US to the continent of Africa is, like, somewhere near Miami, Florida. But no - the closest point (and it's not even much of a competition) is in Maine.   It's a nice old lighthouse called Quoddy Head, not far from the little town of Lubec, which features a few comfy tourist inns, a border crossing into Canada, and the absolute worst place to eat breakfast in the entire Western Hemisphere.

I know that because I've been there. Some years ago, and I think I've mentioned this in here before, I decided to drive all the way across the country. Since it would be my first time doing so, I decided to do something special: travel from the easternmost point of the contiguous US to the westernmost point. And the easternmost point happens to be... Quoddy Head Lighthouse.

From there, the most direct route would cut across Maine, then into Canada, and then pretty much stay in Canada. I have nothing against Canada. I love Canada. But my purpose was to see the US, so I took a route that meandered around south of the Great Lakes, back up through Wisconsin, then across North Dakota and Montana - avoiding interstates the whole way. Took me about two weeks; I wasn't in any hurry. There is no such thing as destination; there are only stops along the journey.

On the off-chance anyone is interested in my chronicles of that journey, well, here's the link to my offsite travel blog. Some of the links therein are broken; time will do that on the internet. First, this   and then starting with this post   and continuing as far as you can stand.

The westernmost point, incidentally, is about a three mile hike west of a map point called Ozette, in Washington State. Ozette is little more than a ranger station; the nearest town is some miles away, and features a bed and breakfast. I stayed there the night before I hiked through the woods to the Pacific. They had a calendar on the wall. The calendar picture at the time featured... Quoddy Head Lighthouse.

Life is weird.

So you ask me what's the farthest I've ever been from home. I could pace it off on a globe; it's Bethlehem. No, not the one in Pennsylvania; the original one. But that's boring. I choose to interpret "farthest" as the most removed psychologically, and for that, I'd have to say: the empty stretch of Washington coastline, a three-mile hike west of Ozette. Hiking six miles, there and back, along a poorly-maintained trail through bear-controlled rainforest, all to fulfill a whim I'd come up with - well, it's not something I'd ever done before, and it's not something I'll ever do again.

But I'm sure glad I did it.