Welcome to this issue of Stumped by Nature, where we notice nature lurking just beyond our screens, curate a list of outside-y events in Austin, and build community with other folks in the thick of the startup ecosystem.
In this week’s issue:
🔥 Fire
🌤️ Upcoming outdoors events
🎃 Pumpkin-adjacent fun
Let’s dig in!
-Nicole
PS. Have a nature-related business or nonprofit? I’m creating a directory. It’s free to join, and you can plop your business details in here. Have your nature-based buddies fill this out too!
PPS. Come meet great people who go outside together: join ATX Outsiders.
Upcoming events I’m hosting:
Monday, November 2: Austin Reading Club: read a book of your choice and meet a couple dozen fellow readers. Solitary hobbies don’t have to be isolating.
EVENT RECAP
October 25, 2026 Chapters & Charcoal was an excellent use of a perfect-weather patio
NATURE SPOTLIGHT
In this season of horrors, we’ve had abundance.
And then they all synchronize.
Today we’re feeling the heat.
A pre-school version of me is still sitting criss-cross applesauce on the classroom carpet during a firefighter’s visit, terrified of the potential for fire to rip through all sense of safety, ready to stop drop and roll for the imminent disaster. From that presentation, I stopped using my nightlight, lest it spark an inferno, and started closing my bedroom door, checking for heat before turning the door knob, an attempt to mitigate rapid spread.
As an adult, the fire risk looms: burn bans that shift camping trip dinner plans, the subplot of a 2009 Gillian Flynn novel. There’s been zero need to consider fire as anything other than capital S Scary.
Until this spring, when I became a real hominin and lit my first fire as a tool, a necessary component of tricking my bees into thinking I’m not a predator.
April 26, 2026, putting my opposable thumbs to use
And I found myself at a ranch just after a prescribed burn, with an eye on green life poking through the destruction.
And I naturally became curious about the fires that are intentional and regulated and small enough that we never need a big one.
Fire as maintenance
Thanks to lightning (and perhaps Prometheus), fire has been nature’s way of nourishing the land for millions of years. Native Americans and European settlers used controlled fire for land access, hunting, and clearing farmland, but as communities grew, so did the fear of fire. When the fear got loud enough, the U.S. federal government’s fire-suppression policies sidelined traditional land management practices, which is to say, let the fuel for more destructive fires accumulate.
March 4, 2026 at Shield Ranch, charred and brittle, post-burn, with signs of life
What is a prescribed burn?
Pulling in part from a 2019 conversation between Randall Maxwell of TPWD and Michelle Bertelsen of the Wildflower Center, we learn that:
burns are goal-oriented: yes to boosting plant diversity and overall ecological health. No to the piles of detritus that would fuel an unprescribed burn, like the downed limbs from 2023 Arborgeddon, the ice storm that damaged about 30% of Austin’s tree canopy
woody plant seedlings, like Ashe juniper, aka cedar, get gobbled up in a fire. That we have a place called Cedar Park + national recognition for our seasonal allergies is not not related to suppressing burns.
fire removes herbaceous material off the top. Some trees get limbed up, some small trees are consumed to maintain grassland’s openness. The seeds on the ground or in the ground have a shot at germinating, rain permitting
a big winner in prescribed burns: the soil. Fire breaks down nutrients in vegetation, making burns a fertilization event
Not all things burn every time, which leaves patches. We like patches—diversity is a good thing
May 8, 2026, Wildflower Center. Not pictured: bees going to town in the prickly pear blooms
there’s an actual prescription: a detailed fire plan, people who ignite and suppress, and spotters with eyes peeled for flames threatening to jump out of bounds.
Also key: wind
animals get a sense that something’s up and they mostly GTFO, either burrowing or high-tailing it out of there
prescribed burns are cognizant of ground-nesting bird season and fawning season, so as to avoid widespread animal harm
the Wildflower Center is approaching this with a research mindset, comparing a control unit of land with similar units that try prescribed mowing or burning in different seasons. Depending on the land, most units benefit from burning every 3-5 years. Watching and listening and learning how to co-exist with the land a little bit better
This is a selective reset: what survives is adapted to endure the pressure
In the days following a prescribed burn at the Wildflower Center, there’s native milkweed wafting, with more opportunity to nestle in the soil, waiting for the rain. The land that’s been overgrazed is slowly returning to a community of tall grasses.
If you thought “is the world burning down” this past month for reasons other than planets in retrograde, perhaps it was reality? Earlier this month, Austin set some things on fire for the sake of a long game with water. In a 140-acre prescribed burn, the grasslands that help water soak in (and build a community of wildflowers, quail, and northern harrier hawks) received the fire treatment. In the future: a thriving Edwards Aquifer, which feeds Barton Springs and groundwater wells in Hays and Travis counties.
And what if we don’t have prescribed burns?
Skip enough small, intentional fires, and the eventual big one arrives at an unnecessarily volatile, destructive cost.
Keeping Austin Safe
Wildfire is not prescribed. It’s named properly as wild.
Cue the 2025 updates to Austin’s Wildland-Urban Interface Code, which focuses on the slices of the city where civilization hugs greenbelt. There’s a nudge for voluntary retrofitting to mitigate risk, but the focus is on making new builds, additions, and/or exterior remodels more resilient in the case of fire.
We also now have the words Ember Ignition Zone to guide us to socially distance from combustibles near structures, including the invasive ivy working its way up your dining room window and the woodpile for the approximately two days you use your fireplace.
Are people loving the higher safety standards for their new decks, patio covers, pergolas, and fences?
Where would the fun of that be?
But fire’s one of those community efforts, where the task of safety is for real on each individual to pull their weight, and the whole neighborhood’s counting on it.
And preparing doesn’t have to happen alone. There’s a Firewise community on standby to rally for safety habits.
A small, cost-effective place to start: adding an ember guard to your chimney (+ sharing your leftovers with your neighbor), and scheduling an on-demand brush collection and getting that neighborhood group text in on the fun of sending tinder to decompose away from your property in peace.
Field note from East Austin, October 22, 2026: did you know the blue reflectors on the street signal where fire hydrants are?
Even with scorpions and lice, we don’t actually want to burn it all down. But we do want to cull the detritus that’s threatening what we value.
What’s choking our growth.
What’s burning us out, and how to use that fertile soil.
What a dream, to regularly prescribe a system of reducing noise so the beautiful, diverse world has a chance to seed.
To hope for the rain to nourish.
UPCOMING EVENTS
🗓️ October 29: Terrariums at Terrazas: An ecosystem in a jar
🗓️ October 29: Fluorescent Forest: bask by the glow of UV light
🗓️ October 29: Wake Up! CPG Austin: A patio with people you might like to know
🗓️ October 29, 30, 31: Dome of the Dead: Halloween on Strings: a musical break from the pumpkin patches
🗓️ October 30: Birding & Breakfast: there will be optional biscuits
🗓️ October 30: Trail Talks: Tech Week edition
🗓️ October 30: The Myths and Mysteries of Bees: The lore around gossiping with bees + a cemetery stroll
🗓️ October 30: Moth Madness Campfire Chat: Friday night with a campfire and a bug sheet. What more could we need?
🗓️ October 31: The Board Walks: think with strangers
🗓️ October 31: Trail or Treat: is your costume trail-friendly?
🗓️ October 31: Flutter Through the Forest: Monarch releases + witnessing what the phrase “Singing Zoologist” entails
🗓️ October 31: Onion Creek Orchard Remembrance & Kickoff: looking back at floods, looking forward to an orchard
🗓️ October 31: Kayak Trash Cleanup: fishing for wrappers
🗓️ October 31: Pollinator Carnival: includes a pollinator costume contest
🗓️ October 31: No Tricks All Treats: Reverse trick-or-treating, with pigs
🗓️ October 31: Texas Wienerfest: Costumed dachshunds are descending on Ren fest grounds
🗓️ October 31: Halloween Star Party: as if you need an excuse for an astronomy/space/sci-fi related costume
An extra hour coming your way
🗓️ November 1: Texas State Parks Day: adventure awaits for free
🗓️ November 1: Monarch Party in Zilker Park: butterflies, seed balls, and flower crowns
🗓️ November 1: Wing Trace: Bird Drawing Workshop: reference images included
🗓️ November 1: Fort Night: Fortlandia after dark
🗓️ November 1: Songs that Spook and Slay: Seasonal, patio-based musical theater
🗓️ November 4: Wednesday Plant Workdays: get handsy with weeds
🗓️ November 5: Cheese & Honey Tasting with Two Hives: waitlisted, but maybe everything will work out
PUMPKIN-ADJACENT FUN
🎃 Texas Pumpkin Fest: there will be professional wrestling + pumpkin pie eating contests + a mechanical bull that is surely a chiropractor’s top of funnel. Ends November 1.
🎃 Pumpkin Nights: Explore immersive pumpkin lands in East Austin. Ends November 1.
🎃 Sweet Eats Fruit Farm: Pig races, apple cannons, wagon rides, and pumpkins with two exclamation marks in Georgetown. Ends November 8.
🎃 Mama Mary's Farm: What you’d expect from a pumpkin patch, this time in Creedmoor. Ends November 8.
🎃 Uhland Fall Fest: The parking’s on Dairy Road. Ends November 1.
PANTRY MOTH UPDATE
I wrote about my pantry moth infestation on June 25, 2026.
I’m aiming for at least 45 moth-free days before I reclaim my pantry.
And yet I’m still crestfallen each time.
That’s all for this week!
In the meantime, I hope you never need to really burn it all down.
-Nicole
OPTIONAL SIDE QUESTS
🪵 Need to metabolize something? I help people write. Let’s chat.
🪵 Shall we take this outside? Of course.
🪵 Are you sitting on a misogi-esque story? Spill.
🪵 Follow my calendar to know when we’re rallying.
🪵 Is this newsletter not your vibe? Forward it to your enemies to make them suffer too.
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