My name is Cedric Keith and I’m a garage attendant from Pittsburgh. I’m a long-distance hiker and runner, too. I’m an author who’s self-published a lengthy book on long walks in the woods and wild trout. I’m a public speaker every now and then. I’m a close observer of all things wild and organic. I’m a published writer and blogger on a range of topics centering on the ecology of the eastern forests and the streams that water them. I’m a fountain of libertarian perspective, one way or another, in most of my writing. I’m an enthusiastic collector of wild edible mushrooms. I’m a devoted reader though a slow one who almost always consumes non-fiction. Most importantly, I’m the freest person I know.
What I am depends on who you ask, I suppose.
My childhood was far-flung across the eastern U.S. and Canada and, although I wouldn’t appreciate it until adulthood, this constant upheaval would shape the man I was becoming. I don’t fear change but instead see opportunity in all of it.
Liberty remains the pinnacle of my values hierarchy. At the most fundamental level, I want a more free society to live in than anything else and this visceral desire shapes my outward politics and the rest of my life as well. I’m skeptical of altruistic designs, especially when they require more power to be vested in allegedly wise and noble leaders. I particularly attempt to make inroads against environmental socialism in my writing – against the environmentalism we encounter most commonly which derives less from science and more from a desire to rule.
My environmental message is a positive one. I see American environmental trends as, overall, positive – more forests, cleaner air and water and a climate passing through its normal short and long cycles. Alarmism in this realm needs to be recognized as originating in politics and I strive to make this case. I like to focus on nature’s resilience and the opportunism of its creatures. The natural world I know is ever in flux, evolving and becoming rather than striving for one prescribed static balance.
I want to write more on nature, to explore more and learn more about the natural world from fungi to moose. I want to wander away and mind my own business. I want to make things and learn things and improve myself and invent new grand designs to chase, like so many of us.
Throughout my life though, it’s become harder for individuals like me to pursue our own pursuits without having our minds and resources conscripted into the grand schemes of our rulers, a paradigm which would seem anathema to the founders of this nation. We work for months of the year in order to simply pay taxes to fund things that we don’t want and that benefit no-one.
In 2020, fundamental American liberties seemed far more imperiled as we watched a fake existential threat conjured in COVID-19, riots swept our cities and a presidential candidate with little popular support was installed as president.
I was one of those inspired to not only speak out, but to take action.