The theme of travel is an important one in Thoreau's writings, operating on both literal and metaphorical levels, closely bound to the author's powerful sense of place. Thoreau took pains to emphasize that seeking exotic locations in pilgrimage toward higher understanding was unnecessary. He repeatedly focused attention on the inward rather than the outward nature of the journey that was most important in the life of a thinking man. He wrote in his journal (March 21, 1840), for example, "Let us migrate interiorly without intermission, and pitch our tent each day nearer the western horizon." He wrote in Walden that he had traveled "a good deal in Concord," meaning not just that he had explored every inch of the town but also that he had traveled inwardly toward higher reality there. Actual travel provided a change of circumstance, but the journey of the mind toward the universal could take place anywhere, and in fact more easily in familiar territory as in a faraway place that could be reached only through effort and expense.
Thoreau unquestionably felt a strong emotional attachment to his native town. He knew its landscape, its people, and its past intimately. He sometimes expressed his love of the place passionately and lyrically. His journal entry for September 4, 1841 reads:
I think I could write a poem to be called "Concord." For argument I should have the River, the Woods, the Ponds, the Hills, the Fields, the Swamps and Meadows, the Streets and Buildings, and the Villagers. Then Morning, Noon, and Evening, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, Night, Indian Summer, and the Mountains in the Horizon.
Thoreau saw Concord as the place where he could best visualize and communicate the universals that transcend place precisely because it was the place he knew best. He wrote in his journal entry for November 20, 1857:
If a man who has had deep experiences should endeavor to describe them in a book of travels, it would be to use the language of a wandering tribe instead of a universal language. . . . The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is excommunicates himself. If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil. Here I have been these forty years learning the language of these fields that I may the better express myself. If I should travel to the prairies, I should much less understand them, and my past life would serve me but ill to describe them.
