"Life moves pretty fast."
"If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Life is moving pretty fast these days. Days turn into weeks and suddenly if I don’t make much of an effort it will be a month since my last newsletter to y’all. Ferris Bueller was right, though, and one of the reasons I’ve not been here is because I’ve been stopping to look around so as not to miss all-the-things. But that leaves little room for writing when busy weekends outdoors are jam packed with hiking, traveling, or camping, and weekdays are for the 8-5, hanging out with my family, catching up on chores, and somehow managing to keep my head above water. I mean, it is all great, I’ve done a lot of fun things in the last month but I could certainly use a quiet weekend at home soon.
Also, I’ve noticed I’ve had a lot of new subscribers in the last month! Thank you subscribing to On Texas Nature! Please feel free to go through the archives here and read what I’ve written for the last year and a half. And if you feel so inclined, become a paid subscriber!
Since I don’t have a ton of time, I thought I’d send out a brief round up of highlights from the last few weeks. I should get a bit of downtime this weekend and I plan to finally work on some longer form content and get that scheduled for the next few weeks. I’m also including some updates to some previously written essays.
A few weeks ago we trekked to east Texas to finally see one of the rarest orchids in Texas, the Kentucky/Southern lady’s slipper (Cypripedium kentuckiense). These are likely a relict species from when temperatures were cooler in the southern US, before the glaciers retreated fully. Populations are struggling in east Texas for a variety of factors. (And no, I don’t give out location information for rare plants!)
The same weekend, two other naturalists found a completely new population of the orchids while out exploring in east Texas. Substack isn’t great with embedding things from Instagram, so click through for each:
The eclipse, y’all. I don’t know if there are words to even explain how badass the whole thing was to experience. We almost missed it, too, as low clouds rolled in 10 minutes before and had us jumping in our car and driving a few miles west to find a clearing. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t contemplating making my way to northern Spain or Iceland for the 2026 eclipse!
Last year I wrote about the US 69 Lumberton-Kountze Relief Route. There were two other public meetings recently but there is also a virtual public meeting with updated information and a public comment section that TxDOT sent out. It’s available through May 6, 2024. Click here to read more and submit your comments.
A proposed titanium mine could heighten Okefenokee's carbon and wildfire risks.
The Okefenokee Swamp, located near the Florida-Georgia state line, is the largest blackwater wetland ecosystem in North America. Blackwater swamps are characterized by their slow-moving river channels that flow through forested wetlands.
Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge safeguards more than 93% of the swamp. This refuge is a masterpiece woven with shimmering waterways, towering cypress trees, and a symphony of species.
The Okefenokee has been recognized as a Wetland of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and is under consideration for nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage site, owing to its unique and intact hydrology and ecology.
Learn about Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge’s landscape, hydrology, and the potential impacts of the proposed mine at the 🔗 in our story.
I personally loved this shade being thrown by USFWS towards Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division for moving forward with permitting a strip mine for titanium on the edge of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. This has been a contentious issue for several years now and the best thing I can refer you to read more about this is
’s essay in the Bitter Southerner, Okefenokee: Heavy and Precious.At some point in the future I’m going to have to address the entanglement of “green” energy with environmentalism and how we can overcome all of that—because we all know, the way we live now, no matter how “green” we try to make it, isn’t sustainable. There’s always a catch.
Back in March I wrote about a comment period for the potential diversion of water to create a reservoir on the Lavaca-Navidad River. TCEQ sent a confirmation reply after their comment period ended that they’d received my comment for the request for a public meeting and that they would be mailing out any information if a public meeting came to happen. I’ll keep everyone posted on all of that if I hear more.
One thing I would like to be more active on this year are these kind of public action notices and so that we can create a better coalition of action.
Coming up in the next month: updates on the new ownership of the former Fairfield Lake State Park, a potential Big Thicket National Preserve expansion, Texas wildlife corridors, and essays about Galveston…and much more!
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and In the Weeds. She hosts one podcast, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and recently retired The Garden Path Podcast.
Awesome find! Green with envy. Thanks for keeping up with the going-ons.
Those orchids are amazing! And I can totally relate to how everything is moving so fast and how little there is.