Thoreau prophesies an American mythology based on the potential of the west. In contrast, the east, where lies the Old World, represents the history, art, and literature of the past.
In "Walking" as elsewhere in his writings, Thoreau explores the idea of a fit expression of wildness, an expression not achieved by English literature nor by any poetry yet written. He writes:
I walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You name it America, but it is not America. . . . There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen.
In Atlantis and the Hesperides, the ancients had their own "Great West, enveloped in mystery and poetry," which can be recaptured each time we look "into the sunset sky." Thoreau refers to Romulus and Remus, who were suckled by a she-wolf and went on to achieve greatness through the founding of Rome. He finds in this ancient Roman legend an elemental recognition of man's connection to the strength-giving wild. The story contains a truth that transcends what we narrowly think of as reality: "The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable." Mythology is a form unbounded by the limitations of fact and common sense. It exists independent of time and place in its relevance as a universal statement.
Walking as presented in the essay is man's attempt to seek and to understand the wild, to confront it directly, on its own terms, outside of ordinary life and of what we think we know to be reality. It is a deliberate journey away from the business of life, as is the river trip described in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and Thoreau's removal to the pond in Walden. The metaphor of the walker as a crusader to the Holy Land elevates walking to a spiritual quest. Thoreau reinforces the metaphor by placing the devil himself in opposition to the freedom and wildness that the walker craves. The "Prince of Darkness" is the surveyor who places the stakes that keep the walker away from the landscape. The "Evil One" cries "Whoa!" to the wildness of mankind. In "Walking," Thoreau more starkly depicts the polarization of nature and civilization as a struggle between the forces of good and evil than he does in A Week or Walden.
