A Year in Great Meadows - Video Tour with Cherrie Corey

In 2015, local historian and videographer, Electa Tritsch, got the inspiration to follow me along the trails at Great Meadows NWR in Concord for a full year, filming its seasonal highlights through my interpretive lens. The result is two 30-minute, on-line video programs featuring the sights and sounds encountered across this marvelous floodplain - a refuge for migratory birds, local wildlife, endangered species, and nature-lovers of all stripes.

A Year in Great Meadows - Part 1 (Spring/Summer)

A Year in Great Meadows - Part 2 (Fall/Winter)

Male marsh wren gathers cattail fluff for his nest

Beginning in early spring of 2015 and continuing for the next sixteen months, Electa and I spent countless hours on the trail in all kinds of weather and at all times of day. We moved and filmed as unfolding light, sounds, and encounters inspired us. Electa persevered to master her equipment in an on-the-move setting, while I rallied to overcome my awkwardness in front of a camera lens.

Electa Tritsch, producer and intrepid videographer

Yours truly

The result, an informative and inspired introduction to Great Meadows NWR in Concord, which I have been dedicated to observing and interpreting to the public for the past nine years. We document spring leaf-out and dazzling fall foliage, grazing muskrats and gaggles of goslings; explore the remarkable cycles of ordinary milkweed and cattails, summer flowers lining the Dike Trail, and dazzling ice patterns along the river's edge. We listen to crickets and warbler songs, watch gnats swarm, and observe a heron and coyote treading softly across thin ice in search of winter prey. Over nearly a decade, I have photographed seasonal wonders at Great Meadows more than in any other location in Concord, with some 140 of my favorite images included in these two videos.

Cherrie leading a monthly walk at the refuge

We are grateful to the Garden Club of Concord and the Concord Cultural Council (an agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council) for their enthusiastic grant support and to CCTV (the community access station for Concord and Carlisle, MA) for their generous contribution of expertise and state-of-the-art production facilities. The program was produced by Electa Tritsch and Oakfield Productions as part of her "Tracks in Time" series carried on CCTV.

These links also listed under Resource Links in the right-hand column of this website:

A Year in Great Meadows - Part 1 (Spring/Summer)

A Year in Great Meadows - Part 2 (Fall/Winter)


Errata (missed during post-production review):
Part 2/Fall-Winter:  Beaver Business (correcting two brain-freeze moments) - Active beaver lodges typically house two adults and anywhere from 4-7 offspring (yearlings and spring kits); Scent mounds are anointed with Castoreum (not castor oil), which comes from the beaver's castor sacs.