Yes - peel the bark when it's green!

A cheap "secret weapon" for working on natural walking sticks is a Stanley SurForm shaver - mine are red, but it's the same gadget.

Use your knife or a drawknife to remove most of the bark and use the SurForm to clean-up, knock off knots, shape areas, etc. I use knife, drawknife, spokeshave, and this gadget, (and sometimes abrasives, including a belt sander) and the surform is the most quickly useful of the bunch.

Second-growth white oak is fine for a walking stick; red oak is not so good. The white oak will be a little heavy for a few months but once it fully seasons it is surprisingly light. If you use denser white oak, such as a split stave, it will be a bit heavier (and also stronger).

Ash makes a marvelously light and strong stick. Maple can be light or heavy, depending on species and growth rate (soft maple is lighter but not very strong). Elm is fantastic. Mulberry is very good and pretty. Osage Orange is dense BUT you can reduce the cross section (by layer, like for a bow) and it is fantastically strong as well as drop-dead pretty.

Second-growth hickory may be the king if you're starting from a sapling; splits are too dense for my tastes.

Sand it all smooth, put a small screw-eye in one end, suspend via cord from a joist, and hand-apply (fingers, not brushes) a polyurathane finish. Follow instructions for 2-3 coats.

A ferrule on the "business" end aids greatly with durability - even a scrap of copper pipe. Epoxy works to secure that. (Personally, I machine a snazzy tip from 6061-T6 aluminum and... but it's only because I can, not because it's important). Also, some sticks have only one orientation for a person; others work both ways, depending on the specific task. My current favorite gets used "heavy" end up or down, depending on exactly what I'm doing with it, has nice grippability either orientation, and is wear-protected on both ends for that reason.

They're just scavenged bits of wood - go nuts and try whatever tickles your fancy. Good cheap fun and often the result is beautiful. It's almost always useful.

Tom