When Meade Cadot was growing up in the unincorporated area of Greenville, Delaware, the town consisted of a railroad depot, a lumber store and a two-lane road.
By the time he was in high school, the places he would walk his dog or go birding had been transformed into housing developments.
“Seeing all my favorite nature walking places turned into housing developments, that had a big impact on me,” Cadot said.
The same thing happened to his grandparents’ dairy farm outside West Chester, Pennsylvania.
“I watched that whole area paved over,” Cadot said.
And it set Cadot, the longtime executive director of the Harris Center in Hancock who was recently honored with the organization’s Educator of the Year award at its 50th annual meeting, on a path to see that the natural places like he enjoyed as a child remain that way for future generations.
His journey to New Hampshire and the Harris Center took many diversions, but they all played a part in creating his personal mission to protect the forests and ponds, rivers and natural habitats of the region.
“Once I was here, I said to myself I’m going to do what I can to help these neighborhoods,” Cadot said.
Growing up, Cadot didn’t have any kids his own age in his Delaware neighborhood, so “my buddies were my beagles and I got into bird watching. They didn’t call it birding back then,” he said.
His interest in birds grew, so much so that when he was in fourth grade, he knew more than his teacher during a bird study. He was invited back the next year to help teach the lesson.
“That was my first foray into teaching,” Cadot said.
Cadot will be the first to admit he wasn’t the best student. That led to being “shipped off to boarding school” in Virginia. But those educational experiences along the way helped shape those passions for the sciences and outdoors.
“I wanted to be a naturalist, ecologist type person,” Cadot said.
He majored in biology at William and Lee University but was pretty unhappy with it. It wasn’t until his junior year when he had to take another science, geology, to complete his degree where Cadot got excited about his future.
“Holy cow, they went outside,” Cadot said.
His educational path led him to the University of Kansas, where he studied ostracods, which he described as microscopic shrimp in a small clam shell. He collected specimens in Bermuda, the South Indian Ocean and Tierra Del Fuego, off the southern tip of South America. It landed him a fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., where he used an electron microprobe analyzer to further his studies of the ostracods during the hot summer nights.
Needing a break, he visited his aunt and uncle in New Hampshire, who lived above Newfound Lake.
“That’s what got me thinking about living and working in New Hampshire,” Cadot said.
Sitting on the edge of the woods, Cadot wondered what it would have been like 200 years before. It’s where he came across his first fisher and he knew it was the place for him.
His aunt happened to know Tudor Richards, the longtime president of the NH Audubon, and “I eventually asked if I could have the summer naturalist position,” Cadot said.
That led to a one year position with the Audubon, overseeing the Willard Pond Sanctuary.
In less than three years, Cadot went from those hot summer nights in D.C. to a job teaching in the environmental studies department at Antioch University and the position of executive director at the Harris Center in 1975.
Through much of his time at the Harris Center, Cadot continued with his teaching at Antioch, which served as a pathway for many of today’s staff to the organization.
“One of the things that kept it interesting for me is teaching,” Cadot said. “The best way to learn is to teach in my opinion.”
He got his masters and PhD in geology, but that is just a portion of his expansive knowledge when it comes to the natural world. Because every time he stepped outside it was an opportunity to learn and then share it with both his students at Antioch and colleagues at the Harris Center.
Cadot spent 33 years as the Harris Center executive director and his impact on the organization cannot be ignored. His legacy is tied to the creation of the SuperSanctuary, a 36,000-acre network of conserved lands stretching across parts of eight local towns.
As Cadot put it. “we were sort of ahead of our time as a land trust.” When the Harris Center settled on the SuperSanctuary name in 1985, it contained several spots of protected land totaling about 3,000 acres. But Cadot had a vision, along with his colleagues, and the mission continued to grow.
“I have not done this by myself,” he said. “There’s myriad of people. I’m glad a lot of people bought into that vision.”
He had seen places like Nashua, Amherst and Bedford succumb to the development boom, but “it wasn’t until I saw the development sprawl hit the Monadnock region,” that he knew something had to be done. And the support for land conservation in the region also didn’t go unnoticed.
“One of the things I like about the Monadnock region was I could tell there was already a strong land conservation ethic here,” Cadot said. “It was here when I got here and I could see how that land ethic could lead to big things.”
It was great to conserve pieces of land, but having them connected would go so much further in the fight to protect.
“We had to conserve enough land to protect watersheds, and where wide ranging wildlife can live,” Cadot said. “They’ve got to be all connected for those critters to survive.”
While Cadot is quick to give credit to all the others who helped the mission along the way, he’s quite pleased with what the Harris Center was able to accomplish under his guidance – and continues to do as he’s taken a much more reserved role as Naturalist Emeritus.
“I’m so glad we were able to conserve these blocks of land,” he said. “I take pride in the fact the Harris Center has been successful as a land trust.”
After handing over the reins of the Harris Center, Cadot moved into the role of Land Director and Senior Naturalist before officially retiring in 2013. But he will never be able to completely leave. As a Naturalist Emeritus he helps lead programs and serves on the land committee.
“I just enjoy it,” he said. “I’m doing the same kind of things as I was when I was 10.”
While the list of awards bestowed upon Cadot is quite lengthy, the one he received at the 50th annual meaning holds a special place.
“It’s not just another award,” he said. “It means a lot more, just being recognized by people you’ve been working with for years.”
When not involved in Harris Center happenings, Cadot enjoys photography – nature-driven, of course – and plays the baritone ukulele after many years strumming a guitar.
“I can handle four strings, but not six,” he said.
He enjoys seeing different regions of the country and world and how nature plays a role. He is known to bring his binoculars and camera along for walks in the woods since there’s always that chance of seeing something new.
“A lot of days I don’t see anything different,” Cadot said. “But I just enjoy seeing nature at work.”
He laments the fact that climate change was a topic back in the 80s and the conversation has resulted in little change.
“Here we are 40 years later and nothing has really happened,” he said.
But in this corner of the world, Cadot committed himself to making it a better place to live by putting nature first. And that’s a mission he will continue to help foster any way he can.