Contemporary author Wendell Berry exemplifies Godman’s text and perhaps
the entire genre of the ramble in his poem “Traveling at Home.” Berry is an heir
apparent to Godman’s mode of walking, and he has long championed the local over the
global, an experienced landscape to a superficial one:
17
William Buckley Smith’s dissertation, “Literary Natural History in Pre-Darwin America” (U of Penn, 2004), is one of the most recent studies of Godman’s work. Smith’s chapter on Godman argues that his work “privileged science and unity” while helping to construct a “proto-ecological sensibly” in Pre- Darwinian natural history essays.
Even in a country you know by heart
It’s hard to go the same way twice.
The life of the going changes,
The chances change and make a new way.
Any tree or stone or bird
Can be the bud of a new direction. The
Natural correction is to make intent
Of accident. To get back before dark
is the art of going. (lines 1-9, 115)
Godman’s walks serve as a way for the author “to get back before dark,” and readers
initially coming to Godman must remain cognizant that at the time he was writing
selections for Friend his condition was terminal. Needless to say, the walks portrayed
within the pages of Rambles are walks of memory and nostalgia. Instead of preparing
his professional legacy by retooling anatomy lectures or personal letters, Godman,
lauded physician and professor, spent his final days writing about walking and
working through the grammar of his experiences with nature. Berry’s paradoxical lines
“the natural correction is to make intent / of accident” inform Godman’s own struggle
toward nature, and he attempts to cast off his years – or illness – as he trudges bodily
and mentally through a known place.
The opening lines of Rambles “No. I” provide a glimpse into Godman’s daily
work, habits of pedestrianism that strongly prefigure Thoreau’s own dictum: “For
many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my
duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths all across-lot routes
[…] (Walden 33). Godman’s standing as an “inspector” of Germantown’s lanes and
creeks seems, like Thoreau, entirely self-prescripted and a product of an insatiable
curiosity to understand the world:
From my early youth devoted to the study of nature, it has always been my habit
to embrace every opportunity of increasing my knowledge and pleasures by
actual observation, and have ever found ample means of gratifying this
disposition wherever my place has been allotted by Providence. When an
inhabitant of the country it was sufficient to go a few steps from the door, to be
in the midst of numerous interesting objects; when a resident of the crowded city
a healthful walk of half an hour placed me where my favorite enjoyment was
offered in abundance; and now when no longer able to seek in fields and woods
and running streams for that knowledge which cannot readily be elsewhere
which past pleasures seldom bestow (Godman 39).
Godman’s tone throughout Rambles has been observed as “avuncular” and familiar.18
He undoubtedly holds a friendly conversation with his audience – every essay in
Rambles concludes with the terse, yet household tag word “John.” There are shades,
however, of deep nostalgia, and even melancholy that thread throughout the text. Take
for instance, the final line of letter “No. I”’s opening paragraph. In a complicated
sentence Godman confesses his love of walking among both country and city
landscapes. Nowhere was unfamiliar to him. Through two prepositional phrases, he
offers parallel memories – “when an inhabitant of the country” and again “when a
resident of the crowded city.” Both statements look to past ventures, past walks. In the
sentence’s closing words, after the semi-colon’s hard pause, Godman reflects on his dire
condition: “and now, when no longer able to seek in fields and woods and running
streams for that knowledge which cannot be readily elsewhere obtained, the
recollection of my former rambles is productive of a satisfaction which past pleasures
but seldom bestow” (39). Writing may be a poor substitute for actual walking and
experiencing the elemental trifecta of “fields and woods and running streams,” but
these memories do seem to mitigate his invalid days at least to some degree, more than
any other “past pleasure.”
18
Godman’s reasons for writing about walking were twofold. First, he desired to
share an intense personal love with his audience while providing the diligent
methodology that had produced his American Natural History series:
Perhaps a statement of the manner in which my studies were pursued, may
prove interesting to those who love the works of nature, and not be aware how
great a field for original observation is within their reach, or how vast a variety of
instructive objects are easily accessible, even to occupant of a bustling
metropolis. (40)
His second cause for writing Rambles involves a gentle didactic agenda. He sought to
instruct the reading public about nature’s hidden wonders; he was interested in what
Thoreau would term in his 1851 Journal the “divine features” of nature (207). Thoreau
himself complimented Godman’s earlier charge of seeking the unforeseen wild when he
wrote, “My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature – to know his
lurking parts. To attend all the oratorios – the operas in nature” (207). Thus, on some
level, Rambles works to bring nature inward, to the living places of those who dwell in
the city but remain alienated from its imminent, spiritual wonder. Godman tells that
nature is not out there, in the far Alleghenies and beyond, but instead it functions as
In addition the spirituality, or God, that Godman finds in the natural world
differs from the awful and sublime god of Niagara that had been so readily revealed to
nineteenth century readers. By contrast, Godman worships the deity of quiet places, the
God of shrews and snails. He envisions a Power who walks the garden in the cool of the
day, creating “all-perfect designs” to be admired (63).
Essay “No 1” provides a template for Godman’s first four walks. It follows him
on journeys down “ordinary streets” and along a creek side in search of those furtive
yet common animals created by, what he terms, “the Author of life” (63). Godman’s
interest in the commonplace remains intriguing because it is through his ramblings that
he comes to know these denizens. Godman confessed, though, that on some days he
was unable to observe his quarry. This persistence of walking over the same ground
and Godman’s attitude of “I hope soon to become acquainted,” eventually grants
rewards (44-45). As a result, Rambles becomes one of the first American works to
catalogue the virtue and beauty of such “mean” animals as shrew-moles, water spiders,
crayfish, salamanders, muskrats, mollusks, deer mice, bluefish, and crabs. For example,
the shell of a fresh water mussel is enough to “excite admiration and gratify our
curiosity” in his mind (53). The loveliness of such seemingly insignificant beings further
produces philosophical inquiry about the fabric of creation. Holding up a mussel, he
Why so much elaborateness of construction and such exquisite ornament as are
common to most of these creatures, should be bestowed? Destined to pass their
lives in and under the mud, possessed of no sense that we are acquainted with,
except that of touch, what purpose can ornament serve them? (53)
Writing thirty years before Charles Darwin’s paradigm shifting The Origin of
Species (1859), Godman had neither language nor precedent from which to challenge his
own questions. As a result, he ends his mediation on the mussel’s shell with a rather
typical pre-Darwinian conclusion: “[No one can] form a satisfactory idea of the object
the great Author of nature had in view, in thus profusely beautifying creatures
occupying so low a place in the scale of creation” (53-54). For Godman it is enough that
God holds the mystery and remains sovereign. Thoroughly entrenched in the scala
naturae tradition, Godman placed his trust in the immutable “Great Chain of Being.”
His vocation, then, is not to find discernable answers to ponderings but to merely
“wander[ ] slowly along borders of the runs, towards a little wood” and allow his
attention to dart from creation to creation, trusting his legs and well as the ubiquitous
“Author of nature” to reveal His design. As Michael George Buckley observes,
“Godman’s vision of the well-wrought cosmos contains two components: one which
It is this cosmic double-vision which informs every step through Germantown’s
countryside.
One melding between Godman’s walking and his keen-eyed acumen readily
appears in the opening lines of essay “No. II.” This account dovetails into his previous
jaunt by picking up where the latter concluded – Godman returns to the same ground
as the day before, hoping to catch sight of an ever-elusive shrew. What follows is
Godman at his most lyrical and mystical. He begins with the well-worn symbol of dawn
unfolding before his footsteps, yet he remains aware of a common criticism leveled at
naturalists – male lovers of domestic nature were often viewed with suspicion. In some
circles, they were seen as emasculated and without masculine ambition:19
On the day following my first related excursion, I started early in the morning
and was rewarded by one sight, which could not otherwise have been obtained,
well worth the sacrifice of an hour or two of sleep. There may be persons who
will smile contemptuously at the idea of a man’s [Godman’s italics] being
delighted with such trifles; nevertheless, we are not inclined to envy such as
disesteem the pure gratification afforded by these simple and easily accessible
pleasures. (46)
Godman, indefatigable in his pursuits, causally silences those “persons who will smile
contemptuously at the idea of a man’s being delighted with such trifles” by walking
beyond the voices of mockers into the still fresh morning (46). Because his walks were
more akin to vigils, spiritual as well as scientific ventures, he suffered little from critical
vitriol. In the following images he moves away from public opinion and into the realm
of private rapture:
As I crossed an open lot on my way to the lane, a succession of gossamer spider-
webs, lightly suspended from various weeds and small shrubs, attracted my
attention. The dew which had formed during the night was condensed upon this
delicate lace, in globules of most resplendent brilliance, whose clear luster
pleased while it dazzled the sight. In comparison with the immaculate purity of
these dew- drops, which reflected and refracted the morning light in beautiful
rays, as the gossamer webs trembled in the breeze, how poor would appear the
most invaluable diamonds that were ever obtained from Golconda or Brazil!
How rich would any monarch be that could boast the possession of one such, as
here glittered in thousands on every herb and spray! (46)
Following this lyrical infusion that heightens with phrases such as “resplendent
brilliance” and “immaculate purity” and then reaches a crescendo with allusions to
environmental observation that “if we tug on anything we find it attached to everything
else:”20
They are exhaled in an hour or two, and lost; yet they are almost daily offered to
the delighted contemplation of the real lover of nature, who is ever happy to
witness the beneficence of the great Creator, not less displayed in trivial
circumstances, than in the most wonderful of His works. (46-47)
I am not suggesting that Godman was quite equipped for a fully realized Muirian
attitude toward nature; however, the latter passage heralds a sensibility that would
manifest and emerge in the last half of the nineteenth century – proper appreciation for
nature can advance the culture and intellect of Americans.21
The impression of “dew-drops” and “gossamer webs,” just as the intricate
markings on the mollusk’s shell, command worth for the seemingly “trivial” elements
of the world. The scene’s beauty is amplified by the spider web’s evanescence. In the
modernist poem “Sunday Morning,” Wallace Stevens observes that “death is the
mother of beauty,” and so, too, Godman, the dying pedestrian, moralizes about the
temporal webs that “exhaled in an hour or two” (46). He must have viewed the webs,
however, in a hopeful light. Though the transitory wisps would disappear by noon-day,
20
John Muir’s famous dictum comes from First Summer in Sierra (1878). This text is one of the finest examples of pedestrian literature to arise from the American West.
21See Donald Worster’s A Passion for Nature: the Life of John Muir for a thorough analysis of Muir’s life and
paradoxically they returned every morning renewed. These webs, because of their
fragile splendor, “offered contemplation” and operated for Godman as tangible
reminders of a benevolent Creator’s works. Additionally, these beauties were singularly
available to any pedestrian, one who moved afoot across landscapes and was able to
visualize and understand the divine whispers that were arrayed before him. Horseman
and carriage-takers may fail to know this joy because they thrashed through the webs
and hedgerows at speeds which muted attention to nature’s subtleties.
Another passage that finds Godman leaning, though not advocating, for a more
contemporary understanding of the natural world derives from essay “IX.” These
middle chapters of Rambles – “No. V”-“No. IX” – comment on his years spent as a
gentleman doctor practicing in rural Maryland. Here Godman reminisces back to a
time when he lived, worked, and walked in an “aged forest of pine.” Maryland’s
temperate biomes provided Godman with additional evidence of the singular value of
nature: both scientifically and spiritually. The first half of the selection finds Godman
musing on the beauty of the forest, while the final paragraph of “IX” concludes with a
move toward conservation. Notice in the following passage how his walking informs
his observations. They are part and parcel of his particular way of viewing and
[The pines] robust and gigantic trunks rise an hundred or more feet high, in
purely proportioned columns, before the limbs begin to diverge; and their tops,
densely clothed with long, bristling foliage, intermingle so closely as to allow of
but slight entrance to the sun. Hence, the undergrowth of such forests is
comparatively slight and thin, since none but shrubs, and plants that love the
shade, can flourish under this perpetual exclusion of the animating and
invigorating rays of the great exciter of the vegetable world. Through such
forests, and by the merest foot-paths, in great part, it was my lot to pass many miles
almost every day; and had I not endeavored to derive some amusement and instruction from the study of the forest itself ,my time would have been as fatiguing to me, as it
was certainly quiet and solemn. (96)
Godman’s notion that nature amuses and instructs certainly was not new to the world
of natural history. However, his focus on the solemn wonder of the “common pitch
pine” highlights his understated genius. Godman’s previous attitudes toward the
mollusk’s shell and the spider’s web are brought to bear with his particular aesthetic
concerning what should be deemed beautiful, worthy of admiration, and, as we shall
see, afforded some form of preservation. After all, pitch pines (pinus rigida) were hardly
the regal or poetic timber of eastern forests. Ranked far below oaks and chestnuts in
long been considered more utilitarian than solemn.22 Yet Godman makes a point to
inform his readers that it was here, among the pines that he conducted some of his most
essential walks. Godman daily journeyed “by the merest footpath” through these
unsung places, and it is through this physical contact that he is able to buttress a love of
walking against both mystical contemplation and scientific details. He goes on to write
about the pines:
The ground was covered with the soft layer or carpet of dried pine leaves which
gradually and imperceptibly fall throughout the year, making a most pleasant
surface to tread on, and rendering the step perfectly noiseless. By beating off
with a stick all the dried branches that projected towards the vacant space, I
formed a sort of chamber, fifteen or twenty feet long, which above was canopied
by the densely-mingled branches of the adjacent trees, which altogether excluded
or scattered the rays of the sun, and on all sides was so shut in by the trunks of
the young trees, as to prevent all observation. Hither, during the hot season, I
was accustomed to retire for the purpose of reading or meditation and within
this deeper solitude, where all was solitary, very many of the subsequent
movements of my life were suggested or devised. (98)
Ecologists have argued that the mature forests are not solely defined by aged trees and
tall canopies. They are created and maintained by density and richness trapped within
the untrammeled forest floor. In the preceding passage, Godman fortuitously reveals
one of the primary faculties of all ancient forests – compact and thriving soil. Years
before coinage of key terms as “old growth” and “ecology,” Godman certainly
understood Thoreau’s maxim that “heaven [was] under [his] feet as well as over [his]
head.” When he chose the “soft layer or carpet of dried pine leaves” for his inner
sanctum, he was making a conscious evaluation of the importance of such places to the
well-being of sensitive humans (98). His evaluation of the forest scene, however, is not