Maphead_ Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks - Ken Jennings [65]
To young eyes, maps do more than offer a vision of permanence. They also reduce the messy world to something that kids can understand—even, in a way, possess. For centuries, maps have been used as a symbol of human mastery over the world. When I visited Rome a few years ago, I was transfixed by the intricate frescoes of Italian and papal provinces in the Vatican’s Gallery of Maps. Each tree in every forest was separately drawn in receding profile, like Tolkien’s Mirk-wood. I later learned that Renaissance-era popes used the hall as an anteroom—while waiting for an audience with His Holiness, visitors were meant to be pondering the extent of his earthly influence, as well as his heavenly leverage. The round orb that traditionally accompanies the scepter and other regalia in a monarch’s crown jewels is a symbol of the globe, reminding subjects that their king or queen literally holds the whole world in his or her hands.† In the twentieth century, a newly independent country would proudly publish its own national atlas as a sign that it had shrugged off the shackles of colonialism.
Whether you’re King Louis XVI or a bewildered modern-day seventh-grader, maps provide that same sense of confidence and ownership, that God’s-eye vantage on the world. Lilly Gaskin likes playing with maps, but she doesn’t really know yet that they represent places. These kids do know, and that’s what sharpens their enthusiasm. “On a map, you can see the whole expanse, even though you’re only in one part of it,” Caitlin Snaring told me. “You know where you’re going next.” Mary Lee Elden has noticed that the best geography bee contestants often come from small towns. The kids from Manhattan or L.A. or Washington already think the world revolves around them; it’s the ones from Minocqua, Wisconsin, or Flagstaff, Arizona, who are so ravenously driven to connect to the faraway places they see on maps.
At the picnic, the light is almost gone, the cookies are almost gone, and the bee parents gather up their kids. The last thing I see before I board my bus back to D.C. is William Johnston and Benjamin Salman, the two architects of imaginary nations, walking together in the twilight, their heads down, talking seriously and animatedly to each other. I have a feeling that the game of plonk is about to arrive on the shores of Alambia.
I expect to hear the familiar National Geographic TV trumpet fanfare the next morning as I walk through the doors of the society’s headquarters between L and M Streets. That’s how “National Geographic” the lobby is: big wise yellow rectangles looming above me on the window glass like the monolith in 2001, a bathysphere and a sculpture of a silverback gorilla on exhibit to my right, Egyptian hieroglyphics and coral reef photos on the elevator doors. The hall outside Grosvenor Auditorium,* where the finals will be held, has a ceiling pricked with artificial stars, re-creating the constellations as they appeared on the night of January 27, 1888, when the society was founded.
I take a moment to chat with the parents of Eric Yang of Texas, who made an early mistake in Benjamin Salman’s room during the prelims but bounced back to make the finals. A decade ago, the Yangs emigrated from Singapore, where, I tell them, my family once lived. His mom, Aileen, takes the opportunity to brag about her evidently well-balanced son: he plays jazz piano, earned a 2200 on his SATs at age thirteen, and made the state swimming team. He reads cookbooks obsessively, she says, but doesn’t like to cook much. He dreams of someday going to Belgium. Eric stands by impassively while his litany of accomplishments is paraded