Audubon and His Journals, Volume 2 — A Closer Reading

Episodic Structure and the Embedded Narrative

Audubon's journals in this volume are not a continuous diary but a collection of set pieces, each with its own title and internal coherence. The table of contents lists over forty episodes, from "The Earthquake" to "The Eccentric Naturalist," suggesting a deliberate arrangement of material for dramatic effect. Within these episodes, Audubon frequently steps aside to let others speak. In "The Burning of the Forests," the lumberer's first-person account occupies several pages, while Audubon's own role is reduced to that of a listener who prompts the story. This technique gives the volume a polyphonic quality, as voices of settlers, hunters, and naturalists are woven into the narrative. The effect is to create a sense of the frontier as a place of shared stories, where personal testimony carries as much weight as scientific observation.

Recurring Motifs: Fire, Flight, and the Sudden Pivot

Fire appears repeatedly as both a literal phenomenon and a narrative catalyst. In the excerpt, the lumberer's tale of escape is triggered by a gust of wind that blows fire toward the room, causing his wife and daughter to bolt for the door. This moment of reflexive flight mirrors the larger pattern of the volume: characters are often shown in motion, fleeing natural disasters, pursuing game, or simply traveling. The verbs of movement—"leaping," "snorting," "ran," "made off"—accumulate to create a sense of urgency. Even the horses and cattle are described with animal panic, their tails "raised straight over their backs." Audubon's prose is most vivid when he captures these moments of sudden pivot, where the ordinary is interrupted by the extraordinary, and the landscape itself seems to become animate.

The Naturalist as Listener and Witness

Although Audubon is famous as a painter and observer of birds, in these journals he often positions himself as a collector of human stories. His own scientific work is mentioned obliquely—the frontispiece notes an unfinished drawing of Townsend's Bunting—but the episodes focus on the lives of the people he encounters. The lumberer's account is not merely a tale of disaster; it includes specific details about the behavior of animals (the dogs running after deer, the cattle following briefly before scattering) that reflect Audubon's own interests. Yet he does not interrupt to correct or annotate. Instead, he lets the narrative stand, trusting the reader to see the natural history embedded within the human drama. This restraint gives the volume a documentary quality, as if Audubon is recording not just birds but the entire ecology of the frontier, including its human inhabitants.

Movement Between Scenes: The Geography of the Volume

The volume's geography is vast, moving from the Missouri River to the Ohio, the Great Pine Swamp, the Florida Keys, Labrador, and the Bay of Fundy. This is not a linear journey but a series of leaps, each episode anchored by a specific location. The transitions between scenes are abrupt; there is no connective tissue explaining how Audubon got from one place to another. This structure mirrors the episodic nature of frontier travel itself, where movement is punctuated by stops of varying duration. The reader is left to infer the passage of time and the accumulation of experience. The effect is to create a mosaic of the American wilderness, each piece distinct yet contributing to a larger picture of a world in flux—a world where fires burn, animals flee, and humans tell stories to make sense of it all.

Readers approaching this volume should expect not a continuous narrative but a series of vivid, self-contained sketches. Pay attention to the moments when Audubon steps back and lets others speak, for these embedded voices carry much of the volume's emotional weight. The recurring imagery of fire and flight is not merely decorative; it structures the way danger and survival are portrayed. And while the scientific content is present, it is often woven into the fabric of human experience, making this as much a portrait of frontier life as a record of natural history.

There’s a particular ache in reading Audubon’s Missouri journals—the way fire and flight keep returning, as if the frontier itself was always vanishing even as he watched. It reminded me of how Bird Stories — Background and Themes lingers on that same quiet tension, the observer and the observed. I found myself setting the first book down and simply remembering that other volume, its warmth like a familiar hand on my shoulder. Bird Stories — Background and Themes stayed with me long after the pages closed.