Stumped by Nature

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:

🧁 Nostalgia/Stumped by Nature turns one

🦇 Audacious Asks

🌤️ 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:

NATURE SPOTLIGHT

In a life before working in venture capital, I was a high school English teacher.

For several years, my classroom window view involved hay bales and planes touching down at ABIA.

Each January, I’d go rogue with a letter writing unit.

I asked each student to want something, and to use that desire to choose a recipient, figure out how to get a letter in front of them, and workshop the words most likely to get a stranger to respond. We worked longer than I would have thought necessary to reinforce there are conventions around addressing envelopes and some rules are not meant to be broken.

As January shifted into the murk of February and the spring state testing slog, we had blips of the outside world slip in through the mailbox.

$1.75 worth of coupons from Kellogg

A $10 gift card for Domino’s

An invite to tour Austin Animal Center

A handwritten letter about character development from Paula Hawkins, of The Girl on the Train fame

Another from Jennifer Niven, glad her book helped a student find support for a friend.

And then there was a hand-delivered case of sparkling water that made the school’s front office very confused.

This was 2017, so the dawn of sparkling water as a truly cutting edge technology. We were a semester deep into a class ritual of wrapping up writing units with a celebration, including passed Takis and Dixie cups of sparkling water for a toast.

One time I may or may not have run out of refrigerated sparkling water by my afternoon classes, and I subjected 5th period to lukewarm bubbles. One student was especially unimpressed by the beverage, and after lodging his formal complaint with me for making his celebration disgusting, carried the grudge into the new semester, where he escalated his feelings to the offending water brand in his January outbound letter.

We went back and forth about how you can say what you mean, but, like, not be a jerk. So he landed on an incredible deadpan, saturated sarcasm.

And the company responded by driving to the school to hand-deliver a complimentary case.

As a natural consequence of his compelling words, the class encouraged him to pop some bottles to celebrate, chanting “chug! chug! chug!” until he indulged in the sweet bliss of free lukewarm carbonation.

This week marks one full year of weekly Stumped by Nature.

A weekly letter into the inbox void that has evolved into a community of excellent people willing to schlep to things like the 2008 Large Tree of the Year, spend Sunday summer mornings reading and writing at Barton Springs, and shake our fists at lawns and lice.

Being publicly curious about nature every week has opened doors I didn’t know existed. One of those doors involves bats: when I co-hosted a bat watching event with THE Skip Hobbie, I met Lee Mackenzie of Austin Bat Refuge educating the masses at Congress Bridge, and I had to know more.

So last weekend, I took some ATX Outsiders for a private tour. We got to see firsthand what two people and a lot of conviction can do.

Austin Bat Refuge scoops up roughly 60% of all Austin-area injured bats and nurses them in a handmade infirmary.

We met Reyna, a Cave Myotis, with a fungal infection threatening her natural habitat.

Queenie, the big brown

Brazos, a Mexican free-tail with questionable vision

We learned why bats end up needing a refuge in the first place, from dehydration, jays and grackles, wing breaks and slices from a world with high rises.

We saw up close what makes a foliage bat a foliage bat—they hang one-legged off of leaf stems.

We learned about the labor of feeding bats in busy season—80 ± bats, 20 or so mealworms each, a dropper of water. With bat babies, the feeds are every few hours. And you have to find them to be able to feed them, even if they hide behind a drape or at the very top of the enclosure.

These bats are nocturnal, and so it seems is Dianne, who takes the late shift and calls it a day at 3:00am.

With the help of a couple dozen volunteers and a couple of half time staff members, these bats take steps toward independence. When they start refusing meals and water, it’s a sign they’re hunting insects on their own, skimming the pooled water in the native gardened flight enclosure, and are ready to reunite with the wild. The releases are celebrations, and bittersweet.

Somewhere between a case of free lukewarm sparkling water and a 3am bat feeding, it dawned on me: there’s no gatekeeper for this newsletter. We can just do things.

Welcome to our inaugural Audacious Asks

The premise: sometimes you can ask for things and people will respond. And that starts with putting an Austin-area nature-y nonprofit’s ambitious wishlist out there.

First up to bat: Austin Bat Refuge, for reasons beyond the irresistible pun.

In an ideal world, the following will flow their way:

If you or someone you know can make it rain on Austin Bat Refuge, cool. Reach out directly to Austin Bat Refuge—zero postage required.
And check out some excellent slo-mo bat videos on their IG.

Worst case: Dianne and Lee keep doing the good work.

Best case: I’ll meet you at the Bat BnB.

UPCOMING EVENTS

🗓️ October 16: Birding at Pease Park: Travis Audubon brings loaner binoculars.

🗓️ October 16: Painter Hall Telescope: get some eyes on other worlds

🗓️ October 16: Astronomy Afternoon: staring into the cosmos

🗓️ October 17: The Board Walks: five miles to have real conversations

🗓️ October 17: Austin Ruck Club: loaner rucks available

🗓️ October 17: Floral Arrangements with Native Plants: may the odds be in your favor to get off the wait list

🗓️ October 17: Austin EcoFest: nature activities + live music + tree and mushroom block giveaways

🗓️ October 17: Grand Meadow Community Garden + Food Forest Kickoff: New food forest alert!

🗓️ October 17: Culinary Mushroom Workshop: expect spores

🗓️ October 17: Travis Audubon Field Trip: birds!

🗓️ October 17: Predators of the Pines: learn what’s stalking through the forest

🗓️ October 17: Star Party at Inks Lake: good excuse to look up

🗓️ October 17: Campout + UV Night Walk: good excuse to look down

🗓️ October 18: Fossil Painting Workshop: there’s a whole cast system here

🗓️ October 18: Plant Bingo: this is a great combination of words

🗓️ October 18: Photography Guided Hike: add some landscape to your photo library

🗓️ October 18: Multilingual Pollinator Walk: plants, languages, and hyperlocal tea to wash it all down

🗓️ October 18: Sunday Yoga: meet under the pecans to stretch and socialize

🗓️ October 18: The Very ‘Rary: an eco-futuristic extravaganza at Laguna Gloria

🗓️ October 20: Hill Climbers Tuesday Ride: start the day rolling

🗓️ October 20: Kids’ Golf Club: get that swing swinging

🗓️ October 20: Tuesday Twilights: add some plants and music to your weeknight

🗓️ October 20: Out in Tech Austin: at Cheer Up Charlies

🗓️ October 21: Sound Bath in the Treehouse: we’re in Austin

🗓️ October 22: Offshore Austin: co-work on a yacht

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

🎃 Indian Springs Ranch: Includes a pumpkin patch + exotic animals + a corn pit south of Austin

🎃 Pumpkin Nights: Explore immersive pumpkin lands in East Austin. It’s legit.

🎃 Sweet Berry Farm: Mazes, rides, and pumpkins with three exclamation marks in Marble Falls

🎃 Sweet Eats Fruit Farm: Pig races, apple cannons, wagon rides, and pumpkins with two exclamation marks in Georgetown

🎃 Mama Mary's Farm: What you’d expect from a pumpkin patch, this time in Creedmoor

🎃 Uhland Fall Fest: The parking’s on Dairy Road. Enough said.

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.

That’s all for this week! 

In the meantime, I hope you don’t squander all of your Salesforce competence in one place.

-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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