The Wild Sovereign Soul Show How one elk hunt revealed the genuine self - Christie Green
Lian and local food activist and hunter, Christie Green, describes how 16 years of solo hunting in New Mexico and Alaska changed her relationship to food, death, her own animal body, and what it means to live in right relationship with the land.
Christie is the author of MOONIGHT ELK: One Woman’s Hunt for Food and Freedom published by The University of New Mexico Press (UNMP)2024. Her forthcoming book, SALMON DREAMING: Coming Home to Alaska will be released by UNMP in 2026 and her third book, THE NEW MERIDIAN: Undamming the West will be released by UNMP in 2028. Residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Kenai, Alaska, and is a land and water steward, landscape architect, local food activist, educator and hunter.
With an educational background in US History from UC Berkeley and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of New Mexico, Green found and fashioned a profession that reflected her personal background and passion: connecting people and place. Food has since been the conduit for communion in Green’s work. For Christies full bio see the show notes https://www.wildsovereignsoul.com/podcast/548.
In this episode, Lian and Christie explore what happened the first time Christie chose to take a life in the field, how that moment cracked something open that decades of growing food, farming, and working the land hadn't quite reached, and how hunting alone became the condition under which she could finally hear herself. They move through the tension of paradox that lives inside the act of killing something you love and revere, how the architecture of an elk's body her own bodily self-criticism, and what it has meant to carry the moon's rhythm rather than the clock's into her time on the land.
The conversation touches on what the animals have taught Christie, and on how she has come to understand hunting not as something she does but as something that is still changing who she is.
Listen if you find yourself eating food you had little part in, and something about that arrangement has started to feel misaligned for you.
We’d love to know what YOU think about this week’s show. Let’s carry on the conversation… please leave a comment wherever you are listening or in any of our other spaces to engage.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
Why the moment of choosing to take a life bore more resemblance to giving birth than to anything Christie had anticipated, and what that told her about the body's intelligence
How working inside the bodies of animals shifted something in Christie's relationship to her own flesh, its beauty, its genius, its refusal to be tidy
What the moon, the dream life, and hunting alone have in common for Christie, and why surrendering to that rhythm has felt, over time, more true than pushing through ever did
Resources and stuff spoken about:
Visit Christie’s website https://www.christiegreen.net/.
Christie’s book Moonlight Elk: One Woman's Hunt for Food and Freedom https://www.amazon.com/Moonlight-Elk-Womans-Hunt-Freedom/dp/0826368913/
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