On a long march

Cedric Keith leaned back in a fold-up chair Wednesday beside Hopewell of Life Ministries Church in rural Portland.

“To me, you don’t know how nice a chair is. It’s a luxury out here,” he said with a sigh.

The Pittsburgh man has been walking for six and a half months across the United States. He’s hiked about 2,900 miles, with roughly 900 miles to go before he reaches Washington, D.C.

Redkey Town Marshal Todd Miller happened across Keith on Wednesday morning while driving back to his house.

“Most people are doing it for a purpose,” Miller said of Keith’s journey. “I thought it was kind of unique somebody was coming through our county that was walking across the United States.”

Keith is gathering signatures from people across the nation for his petition. Once at the capital, he hopes to stick a scroll listing his grievances with the federal government onto the U.S. Capitol’s front door.

That’s why he’s calling his venture “The Long March of Liberty.”

“This all came together very suddenly for me,” explained Keith, who worked in property management in the Pittsburgh area before he decided to pursue a writing career. “And it was really watching the political transformation we’ve witnessed over the last couple years …”

When he began blogging to share his concerns, Keith said, he started to notice his views and visits to his website shrinking. He felt he was being censored, he said, and he decided to take a different route to get his point across.

“I thought that it’s a time of emergency for American liberty, and a time for people to do extraordinary things to show how much liberty means to them and to protect the liberties we still enjoy,” he said.

He decided to make a list of his grievances he thought many Americans would share against the U.S. government. His petition –– which takes on a Libertarian point of view –– touches on several items, including worries about having an untouchable bureaucracy, a rising national debt and technological surveillance.

Keith’s list also includes concerns with global warming and the COVID-19 response.

In late March, Keith drove his car from Pittsburgh to just north of Seattle, sold the vehicle and started walking. He’s been traveling ever since.

“It’s not like I’ve come into this walk utterly blind about long-distance hiking,” he said.

Keith, 43, has a background of about five years of long hikes in the east. His book, “The Dying Fish: A Sojourn to the Source,” details his more than 4,000-mile hike from Georgia to New Brunswick, Canada, looking for native trout in the mountains. He enjoys fishing and aquatic ecology, as well as hunting for mushrooms –– he noted he’s seen several Hen-of-the-Woods and puffball mushrooms on his walk through Indiana.

With him on his walk across the U.S., he carries a 40-pound rucksack filled with mainly the essentials, such as his tent, sleeping bag, fishing pole, cooking pot, burner and a jacket and extra pair of shoes.

A flagpole is attached to the side of his bag and flies the American flag, a face mask and a blue flag with the words “Liberty First” printed on it. He’s also got a myriad of gizmos in his pack ranging from a thermometer to a sleeping pad.

“The big weight is in food and water,” he explained, noting he mostly opts for dehydrated foods such as noodles, rice and oats.

Keith wakes about 6 a.m. every day and begins walking by 7:30 a.m. He’ll take breaks throughout the day –– usually he sets a goal for walking a number of miles before each rest –– before pitching his tent in a secluded area about 7 p.m. He mostly avoids setting up camp near people and animals on his ventures through the countryside.

He’s met a few strangers who offered him a bed for the night. Otherwise, he tries to find a flat and sheltered area, such as under a pavilion. (With his sleeping pad and bag, he explained, a pavilion makes for a good night’s rest compared to other uneven and exposed ground.)

The most difficult part of his journey so far, he said, was the eastern half of Montana with the drought and heat. He became sick a few times from dirty stream water despite filtering it.

Keith hiked through western deserts, sleeping during the more than 100-degree weather days and waking at sunset to begin his nightly hike. (He said he spent almost two months moving by night.)

“I’m not sure how I made it through all that,” he said. “It was one of the four most endurance (intensive) exercises of my life.”

Overall, though, he said he enjoyed familiarizing himself with the American West. Before venturing out into the country, Keith had never seen anything west of the Mississippi. He also got a chance to explore part of Indiana, where he was born and lived until he was 2 years old.

He’s debating whether or not to write a book about his exploration. He’s also thought about driving the distance again someday. After he’s finished with his mission, though, Keith said he’s never hiking across the length of the United States again.

“One kind of thing that has kept me going on the walk, many things have, but simply the thought that I will never come back and do this again,” he said with a smile. “There will never be a take two on this. I have to finish this because I’m not doing this again.”

As of Friday night, Keith crossed the Ohio state line near Union City and settled for the evening.