"I've traveled widely in Concord," Henry Thoreau quipped one day to a group of his fellow-townsmen. I wonder how many of his listeners tittered at his remark.

You can bet not one of them guffawed.

What he meant was that as a mere mortal afflicted with tuberculosis, from which he sensed he'd die early (he'd be 44), he wanted to know intimately the physical nature of his own environment as no other human had known it until that time. And, of course, he ended up doing just that, down on his hands and knees, describing the til-death combat of two ants, for instance, as if it was an epic battle worthy of the Iliad. Civilization inevitably corrupted everyone within its sphere of influence, and he therefore had nothing but contempt, for instance, for all European nations. The major excursion of his short life (in his terms) was from Massachusetts up to Maine, where he sought out Indians of the region.

I once risked what I thought might be instant expulsion from my Cottey teaching position when, at one of our Sunday Phi Theta Kappa scholarship dinners, President Milam told me she "didn't think Henry Thoreau had much sense." I'd fallen in love with Henry when I was 15, and I wasn't yet ready for words from an infidel.

Only later, when I read his friend Emerson's eulogy for his friend, who had preceded him in death, could I begin to accept Dr. Milam's view of Henry. "Henry feels truly alive,' had said Emerson, "only when he is using words to flay an opponent." Well, I could sense the truth of that informed opinion. And did I want to spend the rest of my life being a pain in the a**? Well, no.

Growing up, among the positive things I heard about travel was the easy platitude that might just as well be said of a post card collection: "It gives you a sense of perspective."

But, having recently completed some travel in the U.S., I want to take a second look.

In our travels on the Snake and Columbia Rivers, in the far West, I got to know some new people. Canadians, for instance. One young couple in particular seemed extraordinarily interested in American history and current views on world events. He admitted to being more interested in the U.S. than he was in his homeland.

By contrast, I don't know any Americans who are even faintly interested in the history of our neighbor north of the border, but these two, surely no older than 25, were abuzz with questions about the U.S., and showed an informed admiration of our country.

True, the wife was on assignment gathering material for a story about North American cruises she was in the process of writing for a regional Canadian newspaper.

Then again, most of the other passengers on both our ships were fellow-Americans older than Ginny and I (we figured only oldsters could afford pricey cruises such as ours), and, hence, Republicans. I admit to being all my adult life surrounded by Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents.

That's the price of being a college faculty member. All during the Reagan administration, I knew only one Republican Cottey faculty member. (Surely there must have been others in California.). So these cruises provide a much-needed education in avoiding potentially lethal verbal land- mines.

Toodling around the small, college town of Corvallis, Ore., where Cottey retiree Marjorie Goss rents a first-floor apartment (for a fee that would outrage a Nevadan), I was struck by the care people take of their lawns. New York City, of course, is out of the running.

New Yorkers toss their trash into a basket, if one happens to be near. I happened to grow up in Westchester County, N.Y., where homeowners hire vacationing kids to mow their lawns and remove the weeds from their gardens once a week, in summer.

But these Oregonians positively "fuss" over their lawns and gardens, and they do so at the first sight of disorder.

A couple of times during our stay there, obviously returned from their office jobs in nearby Portland, young men could be seen in their suits, white shirts, and ties rummaging on their hands and knees in their gardens. Oregonians seem to have "soil," not "dirt." And maybe it's less dirty than the kind we have here in the Midwest. I've always heard that the environment is of the utmost importance to people who live in the upper northwest, and I believe it's true.. Even kids who drive their cars down the Corvallis streets think twice before polluting the circumambient air with the base notes of their rock music.

No city I've ever become familiar with has more civic pride than Portland. Ore. It is, to say the least, a monied city (computer software). And corporations so clamor to locate there that they don't object to dedicating one percent of their building cost, as per the Portland building code, to art work for their building.

They obviously believe a money-making company owes something to the people who have helped make it rich. It's clearly a city meant for its people: its streets and sidewalks have lanes marked off for bicycles, there is an art museum, and its many parks are equipped for sports of all kind, including quiet meditating. Henry Thoreau could find a home there.

Travel, this past month, put me in touch with a myriad wonderful things along the path blazed, 200 years ago, by Lewis and Clark. There's much to be said for "traveling extensively" in one's back yard.

But there's also a lot to be gained by traveling, eyes and ears open, far from home.

Sometimes, in pooh-poohing travel outside Concord, I don't think Henry Thoreau had much sense.