Cedric C. Keith

Cedric grew up traveling. Uprooted frequently from his childhood “comfort zones,” Cedric learned early to find opportunity in changing environments, a skill that would serve him well in adulthood.

In Tennessee, a very young Cedric found puddles, ditches and bugs near his home apartment complex in urban Nashville. In Newfoundland, Cedric tried a little of everything that kids naturally do, including corralling as many kinds of crawling creatures as possible. In Nova Scotia, a nine and ten-year-old Cedric continued all his earlier habits, just straying a little further from home. In the western Maine wilds, Cedric developed a passion for brook trout, for wilderness and for wandering with a fly rod. The pattern only continued as Cedric grew older, moving around other eastern states and discovering new aquatic creatures.

As a high school senior, Cedric felt disheartened by the prospect of more formal education, despite the high hopes of school administrators who made much of his scholastic achievement. It seemed to him that college was “oversold” as being the only path to success for everyone. Having experienced the group think inherent in the public schools, he wished to go out and find his own way forward.

The ten years following high school saw Cedric perform a wide variety of menial jobs, from grocery stores near Nashville to an apartment complex in Pittsburgh. For better and for worse, he found himself pulled in many directions by life’s circumstances and his own mind. He read widely during these years, trained physically and fished.

While working as a janitor in Pittsburgh, Cedric encountered the work of the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, an association of trout researchers and conservationists who’s mission was assessment and preservation of our native eastern trout, a species close to Cedric’s heart since childhood. Sensing a rare moment of freedom and window of opportunity, Cedric quickly envisioned a research and conservation project in which he would walk through the entire eastern U.S. range of the species. A year of planning and preparation followed and then Cedric caught a bus to Georgia in the summer of 2007.

The rest is chronicled in “The Dying Fish”, the story of a long walk in the woods. There was a definite plan – a program to follow, but the lively and compelling nature of that story sprang from the unforeseeable. Much would change along the way: the characterization of brook trout, Cedric himself and, in the end, even the mission itself.

Cedric currently resides in Pittsburgh, works in property management and pursues his ecological interests, photographing and writing about it all.