One member of the panel with considerable office clout kept pushing his mother-in-law’s garden as Australia’s most splendid natural wonder
“No,” the politically stupid man next to him insisted yet again. “That’s man-made.”
“No, it’s not,” repeated the son-in-law. “It’s natural.”
“I’ll vote for that,” said the politically astute man across the table.
“What a bold move,” grinned another.
That this mother-in-law’s garden failed to make the final cut, or any cut whatsoever, speaks well for the integrity of the list you are about to review.
The rest wasn’t quite so easy.
Five years earlier, a panel of Tribune correspondents, writers, photographers and editors was assembled for the purpose of selecting today’s Seven Wonders of the World for the Chicago Tribune Magazine. Those wonders, in the tradition of the ancient Greeks who came up with the original list several years before Y0K, were to be man-made structures, grand of size and design.
For that list, input was solicited and received from outside experts in related fields. During deliberations, there was considerable verbal wrestling; one panelist, to this day, remains pathetically bitter over the quick rejection of his personal favorite, South Dakota’s Crazy Horse Memorial, which was shot down on the grounds that the thing wasn’t close to being even half-finished. But in the end, we came up with a pretty good collection of wonders (which we revisit on Page 29):
China’s Great Wall, Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, Petra, the Statue of Liberty and, the lone holdover from the original Grecian formula, Egypt’s pyramids.
Five years later, with the Crazy Horse Memorial still not close to being even half-finished, it was time for a sequel.
The Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
First, we set rules.
We were to choose one wonder for each of the seven continents. We were going to do it that way to assure worldwide distribution of wonders, to make the process especially challenging and, mainly, because the editor who came up with the idea wouldn’t give it up.
“North America has three first-class wondersNiagara, the Grand Canyon and the Canadian Rockies,” responded one prospective panelist. “Are we really going to knock two of these off to make room for some damned icecap in Antarctica that nobody has ever seen or is ever going to see?”
Yep. But to soften the outrage of critics like the above grump, we would choose seven runners-up for each continent.
The natural wonders could be anything created by nature: mountains, buttes, waterfalls, deserts, rivers, rain forests, rookeries, seas, swamps, canyonsanimal, vegetable, mineral or a combination of all three, as long as the wonder could be expressed in geographic terms. Chimney Rock, in Nebraska, would qualify; a dragonfly, certainly wonderful in every way (unless you’re a mosquito), wouldn’t.
Though man’s creations have enhanced many natural wonders, the enhancements were not to be considered. Sydney Harbor, then, was hills, water, birds and marsupialsbut not all that plus the Harbor Bridge and Opera House too.
Finally, naturalistic but man-made creations were ineligible. No rice terraces or arboretums, green as they are. Geographic entities whose borders were artificially fixed by humansnational parks, for example, or Mauritaniawere eligible but, well, no gardens that wouldn’t exist without the mother-in-law.
What hadn’t been determined, even as the panel of 15 women and men gathered to consider the basic issue, was the basic issue:
All nature is marvelous, and much of it is mysteriousbut what determines a “wonder”?
One panelist came up with a test that worked for everybody.
“My wife and I did this together,” he said, “and we decided to apply the Wow!’ test. It was prompted by the first time we went to the Grand Canyon and walked to the edge and said, Wow!’ Which you wouldn’t do with a field of grass.”
“But,” said another, “you’d certainly do it if you were plopped down in the middle of the Sahara Desert.”
And that easily, we were off to Africa.
“One of the things I would vote for in Africa is the Virunga Mountains,” said one of the panel’s photographers, “that whole volcanic range that supports the only living mountain gorillas left in the wild.”
Moderator: “So it’s a combination of the mountains and the gorillas?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because of the habitat, the gorillas are there.”
There was a question from the panel: “I ask if the Sinai is considered Africa or Asia?”
“Yes, I had trouble with that too,” echoed a neighbor.
The moderator declared the Sinai in Egypt and, therefore, in Africa.
“So Israel is considered Asia?”
“Right,” said the moderator. “And in the Pacific, OceaniaAustralia, New Zealand and all the other islandscould include Hawaii.”
Panelist: “We may get a few screams if we try to revoke Hawaii’s statehood . . . “
Back to Africa. Another panelist.
“If you’re talking about nature at its most stupendous, it seems to me you have to have one great mountain range, one huge ocean, and you’ve got to have one big desert,” he said. “If you go out into the Sahara and you get lost, you’re terrified. It’s huge, it’s vast, it’s overpowering.”
“It’s so stark, so vast and so empty, you do say ‘Wow!'” agreed another.
Moderator: “Have you been to Victoria Falls? Between the Sahara and Victoria Falls, what’s our candidate?”
“What about the Serengeti?”
“Yeah,” said the woman across the table. “I’m holding out for that.”
Now, things were cooking.
“There’s also Table Rock, in Cape Town,” said a new voice. “That’s a pretty stunning photo.”
“But are we doing this for Kodak,” said another, “or are we doing this . . .”
“You have to say, ‘Wow!’ “
“But you are saying ‘Wow!’
when you see the Sahara,” said the holdout woman, who had been waiting like a big cat in tall grass eyeing the kill. And now she pounced. “You do say ‘Wow!’ when you look over a huge plain and you see thundering herds of animals. You say, ‘Wow!’ You say, ‘Holy . . .!’ You’re talking about the combination of nature, of animals and land that still exists, and it only exists in a couple of places in the world.”
There was, briefly, silence.
“Semantically,” said an almost forgotten voice, the desert person, “Sahara is one of the big names . . . “
The woman sagged in her chair.
“I’m probably going to lose, anyway,” she said. Then she got an ally — the photographer who had been pushing the Virunga and the gorillas.
“There are so many different kinds of animals in such incredible numbers,” she said. “The migration of wildebeests is more than a million of them. That is, in Africa, the No. 1 place for animals, which is what you go there for.”
And another.
“That, for me, would give the Serengeti the edge over the Sahara,” said one of men conflicted over the Sinai. “Because part of what we’re trying to do here is say to people, ‘Hey, here’s something you might actually go to.’ And while clearly people would go to the Sahara, it’s not reasonable that many people are going to want to fly to Timbuktu and rent a Land Rover.”
The Sahara’s strongest supporter recalled a story he had written about that desert.
“I’ve got to admit,” he said, “that after this article I wrote, I wasn’t exactly inundated by calls from people asking, ‘How do I get there?’ “
There was a vote. The Serengeti edged the Sahara. It was not unanimous, but no one wept.
We would do this six more times.
Antarctica was a challenge.
“I mean, there’s Mt. Erebus, but there are other volcanoes,” said a panelist who knew the territory. “The South Pole is under 3 miles of ice, so there’s really nothing to see.”
But the Dry Valleys . . .
“For drama,” he said. “The ice comes up to the top of the mountains and then there’s a valley with no ice at all on a continent where everything else is ice.”
The Dry Valleys are amazing, said another who had been there, “but they’re hard to get to. There are places that are reachable, and you could easily come up with a list of seven credible places from those.”
We did.
Europe was difficult.
“Europe is wonderful, but not very wonder-full,” wrote a contributor. The Rhine, the Seine, the Danube, the Thames have their charms, he wrote, but the charms are from civilization. “Take away London or the chateaux and what have you got? A nice stream and a few cows.”
Iceland was the early leader. “It’s a most unusual and spectacular piece of territory,” argued a panelist. Others pushed for the Amalfi Coast and Norway’s fiords, or for relatively unknown places in the Balkans. There was a boomlet for the Alps that quickly went bust.
“I thought nothing could surpass flying over the Alps,” said a panelist, “until I flew over the Himalayas. This was the Alps times 10 . . . “
But were the Himalayas the wonder of Asia — or just Everest? How about the Yangtze River? Someone mentioned China Beach.
“I just put that down because it’s a great beach,” said the someone. “You don’t have to take that seriously.”
Mt. Fuji? Well . . .
“You could spend a couple of weeks in Japan, even be very close to Mt. Fuji, and never lay eyes on it, because it’s constantly under a cloud,” said a panel member. “The wonder would be if you ever see it.”
Australia and Oceania generated mist in the conference room. Tales of the South Pacific and dreamy places like Hawaii, Bali, Bora Bora. “I’ve always been mesmerized by Bora Bora,” sighed a panelist.
And what about Australia? Which is grander, Ayers Rock or the world’s longest coral reef? Are there better reefs in the Philippines? Better beaches in South America?
South America, it turned out, was one of the easier continents, so far as picking a wonder of wonders.
“Somebody’s got to vote for Iguassu Falls,” insisted one panelist. He didn’t. No one did.
And finally, North America.
The Mississippi, someone said. Yellowstone. Mexico’s Copper Canyon. Carlsbad Caverns. The Canadian Rockies were nominated.
“Are the Canadian Rockies,” asked a contrarian, “that much more spectacular than the Colorado Rockies?”
“Yes. The U.S. Rockies are like the little kid brother.”
It was time to decide.
Moderator: “Now, we have to vote for No. 1 in North America. Is there any debate?”
There was no debate.
Turn the page. Prepared to be Wowed . . .
THE ‘WOW’ TEST.
All nature is marvelous and often mysterious — but what determines a wonder?
Decisions, decisions To those who have experienced them first hand, Mexico’s Copper Canyon (top) rivals the grandest canyons on the planet, and the sight of massive Ayers Rock (above) standing atop Australia’s flat Outback is incomparable. Our job, like it or not: Compare them.
