BATTLE GROUND — One day in December 2016, during a rail journey into same northern Italian countryside where the legendary luthier Antonio Stradivari made his stringed masterpieces, Mark and Sharon Moreland found themselves deep inside a gray, soupy fog.

They realized it was just like the weather back in Battle Ground, which is also equidistant to both mountains and ocean and enjoys a similar mix of rain and wind, humidity and sunshine. Mark Moreland (the son of a geography professor) even checked the coordinates and confirmed that Cremona, Italy, and Battle Ground, Washington, are both slightly north of the 45th parallel — the latitude line that marks the halfway point between equator and north pole.

“By my calculations, I’m half a mile south of Stradivari’s workshop,” said Moreland, 68, who has been building violins, violas and cellos since he was a teen in the 1970s.

He and Sharon, his wife, business partner and accountant, settled down in a combined home-and- workshop on the east side of Battle Ground in 2010.