Grab your hiking boots: A look back at some of our favorite stories about the great outdoors

This year, Texas Standard is celebrating 10 years on the air – and we’re reflecting on some of our favorite stories from the past 10 years.

Since June is National Great Outdoors Month, we’re taking the opportunity to revisit some top stories about the outdoors: camping, hiking, birding and everything in between.

Make sure to check out our birthday page for other top 10 lists – music interviews, the best of W.F. Strong and more – and to see if Texas Standard will be visiting your city on our birthday tour!

10. Typewriter Rodeo: Texas Campgrounds

Texas has no shortage of great camping spots, which inspired Kari Anne Roy’s ode to the beautiful – and sometimes not-so-beautiful – aspects of sleeping out under the stars.

9. Texas will soon be getting a brand-new state park in the Hill Country

Did somebody say camping? The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department recently purchased a 2,000-plus acre tract of land in Burnet County with the goal of turning it into a state park. The parcel is located next to the existing Colorado Bend State Park and will provide visitors with activities like fishing and hiking as well.

8. Austin’s Sunshine Community Gardens provides a space for everyone to grow

This three-acre plot of greenery within Austin’s growing concrete jungle, where hundreds of gardeners rent beds, is meant to be as welcoming to as many people as possible. The land is leased from the nearby Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and accessibility has long been part of Sunshine’s mission.

7. Batnado at Bracken Cave is an incredible natural phenomenon with 20 million players

Nightly in the summer months, between 10 and 20 million bats stream out of Bracken Cave to dine on bugs. Texas Public Radio’s Jack Morgan took a visit to the spot outside San Antonio.

6. Ultramarathoner to embark on 850-mile run across Texas

Ultramarathon runner Matthew Johnson is no stranger to extreme endurance, having run several races that were 100 miles long or more. He spoke with the Standard in 2024 as he was preparing to run from El Paso to Galveston – 850 miles, give or take – to raise money for the nonprofit ValorFit.

5. Want to live in Big Bend National Park while working on your art? Here’s how

Dream job alert: After a yearslong hiatus, the Big Bend National Park artist-in-residence program is back. It gives artists the opportunity to live and work in the park while helping with engagement and outreach efforts.

“Just the landscape itself just lends itself to just incredible creativity,” said Tom VandenBerg, chief of Interpretation & Visitor Services at Big Bend National Park. “People see this place in completely new ways often after attending one of the artist-in-residence programs.”

4. ‘Cemetery Birding’ highlights why hobbyists are flocking to cemeteries across Texas

A Northern Mockingbird perches on a gravestone at Oakwood Cemetery in Austin.

Author Jennifer L. Bristol visited some 300 cemeteries across the Lone Star State to write her latest book, “Cemetery Birding: An Unexpected Guide to Discovering Birds in Texas,” spotting lifers and uncovering history throughout the journey. She whittled down a list to 91 – one more location than featured in her previous book, “Parking Lot Birding.”

Bristol says part of her turn toward cemeteries in this latest installment is to help people connect with nature who may typically think of it as a faraway place – when, instead, there are opportunities to forge those connections in spaces that may just be down the street from you.

3. These Texas Girl Scouts take their troop underwater ‘to make the world a better place’

Girl Scout Scuba Troop 40349 in Central Texas does everything that other troops do – but underwater.

The Scuba Scouts is a special interest troop where girls ages 12 to 17 can become certified scuba divers, taking their love for service to new depths. Along with exploring Texas’ waterways through scuba diving, the scouts are also examining the environmental impacts of things like sunscreen or zebra mussels.

2. Would you like to be able to hike across Texas?

Hiking the Appalachian Trail is a bucket-list goal for many adventurers. Whether you travel the full 2,000+ miles or only a fraction, the trail offers a challenging and scenic tour of the southern and eastern U.S.

Now, some folks have dreams of creating a trail to rival the original, right here in Texas: the xTx, or Cross Texas Trail.

“The vision of our five-year plan that costs $5 million is to put a water stop every 15 miles along the route. And in some cases, those will be simple places, very much like the Appalachian Trail, where there’s a simple shelter, there’s a latrine and there’s a water source back over here,” said Charlie Gandy, the man behind the project. “We’ll also have StarLink connections and security cameras so that we have communication to the outside world.”

1. Cut off: East Texans fished and hunted here for generations – until a new owner built a fence

A “no trespassing” sign is pictured on a fence located on a lake five miles south of Trinidad, known as the Cutoff to local residents, on Sept. 6, 2022, in East Texas.

For generations, families visited the Cutoff – a public waterway under Texas law that runs about 12 miles along the border of Henderson and Navarro counties – to fish, hunt, boat, bird watch, or just be outside. It’s such an important outdoor recreation space that, in 1931, the Texas Legislature passed a bill explicitly stating that the Cutoff “shall remain open to the public for fishing and hunting.”

But a local landowner whose property includes much of the land around the Cutoff put up a fence in early 2022, blocking off the beloved spot. And locals weren’t giving up access without a fight. The Standard’s Michael Marks investigated.

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