In the fall of 1847, Thoreau again took up residence in the Emerson home, where he remained until July of 1848, when he moved back into his parents' home and took odd jobs to earn money. In the late 1840s, he became proficient and sought-after as a land and property surveyor, a line of work that allowed him to spend time outdoors. He worked not only for private property owners, but also for the Town of Concord, assisting in laying out roads and walking the bounds in his capacity as "Civil Engineer." Most of his surveying was done in Concord and towns nearby, but occasionally he traveled farther afield, as when he surveyed Eagleswood in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, for Marcus Spring, in November of 1856. Thoreau's precision and accuracy as a surveyor were highly valued.
In the period after he returned from Walden, Thoreau reveled in tramping about the woods and fields of Concord, sometimes with the Emerson children and other young companions, and explored in his journal what Concord meant to him. He wrote repeatedly of the place as a sufficient microcosm of the world, at least as hospitable to individual development and self-realization as any larger, older, or more cosmopolitan place. In his journal entry for March 11, 1856, for example, he wrote:
If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss. . . . At best, Paris could only be a school in which to learn to live here, a stepping stone to Concord, a school in which to fit for this university. I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events . . . so that what my senses hourly perceive . . . may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me. . . .
As deeply as Thoreau loved Concord, there was undeniably a certain philosophical detachment in his appreciation of it. The search for transcendent truth outweighed the attractions of specific locality for him. The simplification of and deliberate approach to life had been the crucial aspects of his experiment at Walden. Others, he knew, could find meaning in Waldens of their own, without ever setting foot in Concord.
