How one elk hunt revealed the genuine self - Christie Green
Episode 548, released 13th May 2026.
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.
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Christie Green is the author of MOONIGHT ELK: One Woman’s Hunt for Food and Freedom published by The University of New Mexico Press (UNMP) in 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.
Christie Green resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Kenai, Alaska. Ms. Green’s platform as a land and water steward, landscape architect, local food activist, educator and hunter attracts passionate audiences in these fields. She represents a fundamental missing bridge between polarized audiences and cultural extremes.
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.
Since 1999, Green has taught educational workshops, presented locally and nationally and leads restoration projects. As a landscape architect and entrepreneur for 21 years, Ms. Green has been a featured speaker and educator at local and national conferences including, The Xeriscape Council Land and Water Summit, the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Environmental Design Research Association and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.
She was an artist-in-residence in the Food Justice and Water Rights programs at the Santa Fe Art Institute and has won awards for her work, including the City of Santa Fe Sustainability Award for Water Conservation for her legacy project at the Academy for the Love of Learning, and has been recognized for her design and implementation work with the Tewa Women United Española Healing Foods Oasis.
In 2014, upon completion of her master’s thesis focused on the cultural and ecological effects of hydraulic fracturing in the 17 oil-producing counties of western North Dakota and obtaining her MLA, Green founded radicle, an alternative eco-activist landscape forum to challenge prescribed definitions of landscape architecture.
The regenerative projects of Green have been celebrated in numerous publications including: The Santa Fe New Mexican, edible, Green Fire Times, Seed Broadcast, Palo Alto Weekly. In the February 2019 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine, Ms. Green and her award-winning work we re featured in the article: The Huntress : With Her One Woman Practice - radicle - Christie Green Works to Repair Our Relationship With Nature, Including the Plants and Animals We Eat.
Green was a contributor to the quarterly publication, edible Santa Fe for four years, propagated, cultivated and sold over 100 varieties of edible crops, has been a featured speaker locally and nationally and has been awarded multiple federal grants for ecologically regenerative projects in riparian, agricultural and arroyo ecosystems. In 2012, Green was nominated for Best Santa Fe Business of the Year; in 2015 she was nominated for Best Woman-owned and Green Business of the Year.
Her essays continue to be featured in edible New Mexico and Dark Mountain, Waxing and Waning, The New Farmer’s Almanac, Seed Broadcast, and New Mexico Magazine.
In 2023, Ms. Green launched the christie nell collection of fabrics and garments, inspired by the animals she hunts and their habitats.
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 below.
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 that we spoke about:
Visit Christie’s website.
Christie’s book Moonlight Elk: One Woman's Hunt for Food and Freedom
Join the upcoming Wild Sovereign Soul Pilgrimage here.
Join UNIO, The Community for Wild Sovereign Souls: This is for the old souls in this new world… Discover your kin & unite with your soul’s calling to truly live your myth.
Don’t want to miss a thing?
Subscribe (BTW, it’s absolutely FREE) to the show on your favourite platform or app by clicking the relevant button below… That way you’ll receive each episode automagically straight to your device as soon as it’s released!
Thank you!
Lian & Jonathan
Episode Transcript:
Please note: We are a small team and not able to check through the transcript our software provides. So you may find some words are out of place and a few sentences don’t make complete sense. If you do see something utterly ridiculous we’d love you to let us know so we can correct it. Please email any howlers with the time stamp to team@bemythical.com.
Lian (00:00)
Could hunting be one of the most honest relationships a human being can have? Not only with the food they eat, but with animals, the land, their body, and even perhaps their own soul. Hello, my beautiful soul seekers. This week I'm joined by local food activist and hunter, Christie Green, to explore 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's first book, Moonlight Elk was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2024. We 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.
We move through the tension of paradox that lives inside the act of killing something that you love and revere. How the exquisite architecture of an elk's body changed her own bodily self-criticism and what it has meant to carry the moon's rhythm rather than the clocks into her time on the land. The conversation touches on what the animals have taught Christie on how she has come to understand hunting, not something she does, but something that is still changing who she is. So listen, if you find yourself eating food that you had little part in creating, making, sourcing, and something about that arrangement has started to feel misaligned for you.
And I'll just add, even if you're ethically opposed to the killing of animals, I will just share with you that even, maybe especially as a lifelong vegetarian vegan myself, I found this just such a beautiful honouring and heart opening conversation. It's one of my favourites actually in the 12 years I've been podcasting. And so I would encourage you to give it a go and see how it lands for you.
But first, if you've just arrived here, welcome. If you've come back, welcome home. And if you keep finding yourself here without subscribing, your soul clearly knows what it's doing. So honour that call and go ahead and subscribe. It's challenging to live in this crazy modern world. Wild sovereign soul is what we know will help. And so if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path and your heart longs for guidance, kinship and support, Come join us in Unio, the community for soul seekers. Unio is the living home for the wild, suffering soul path, where together we reclaim our wildness, actualise our sovereignty and awaken our souls. You can discover more and walk with us by hopping over to wildsovereignsoul.com slash Unio or click the link in the description.
And if you're called to go even deeper on your path back home to soul, Come join us for the upcoming Wild Sovereign Soul Pilgrimage, a three month immersive online group journey home to soul. We begin on the 19th of May and enrollment is open now and there are some spaces still available. So if you want to find out more and join us, come along to wildsovereignsoul.com slash pilgrimage. And now back to this week's episode, let's dive in.
Lian (03:34)
Hello Christie, welcome to the show.
Christie Green (03:38)
Hi, Lian Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be in conversation with you. I feel honoured to be invited. So thank you.
Lian (03:48)
My pleasure entirely. I'm so looking forward to this conversation. It's one that I have a sense is going to be so, so rich with, you know, we talk about these ideas of say rewilding or being in contact with the land or animism. And you're someone who my sense of what I know of you at least is you are living these ideas in a way that is, I'd say unusual in these days and times. So I'm so looking forward to this conversation.
Let's begin at the beginning. And I would love to know, looking back to childhood, as I often say, we can join the dots looking back to childhood often for clues as to where our soul is going to call our life into in the future. And so for you, knowing what your life is filled with now, where can you see those dots looking back?
Christie Green (05:01)
Yeah, it is. Things make sense in retrospect, right? But looking forward, it's almost like, well, not sure which way we're going to go or how it's going to end up. But I would say, you know, I was raised in Alaska. And so much of my childhood was about deep immersion into the other than human world. And also, Alaska is a very extreme place in terms of scale. so the size of the mountains, the size of the animals, the proportion of human to other than human is less than a lot of other places in the states. I mean, it's the largest state in the country and the lowest human to land ratio. So there's a lot more other than human than human. And now I think about that and feel that when I was growing up, I was just in the place living, you know, walking to the bus stop, there'd be moose, or, you know, a warning of a bear in the neighborhood. did not.
Lian (06:04)
Wow.
Christie Green (06:05)
I didn't live in the bush. I wasn't like that far out. I was still in the road system and I lived in the largest city in Anchorage. We had an acre of land. So we fished for salmon or we'd go pick raspberries. was just kind of my parents were both very much outdoorsy. And then I also have my mother's side of the family are farmers. So in the summer we would go to Texas to the lower 48 and work on the farm with my grandfather and my grandmother and aunts, uncles, my mother, everybody was very much involved with food production and also creating meals and food and coming together around the table, right? As in my word, it's like a form of communion. So again, I was just what we did, you know, we would can beans or garden or, you know, come around the table to eat my grandfather raised cattle. So I would say there was this deep relationship with place and deep relationship with food from early on that I just, and maybe in some ways, took for granted. And then as I grew up and as I started my business as a landscape architect 26 years ago, my niche was about food and edibles and connecting to place and to each other through food. yeah, land has always kind of been my… medicine, my home, and food has been my way of creative expression and also connection.
Lian (07:37)
Hmm. Yeah. So you had really, you know, I said at the beginning, the way you're living into these themes that many people in this modern world are just reawakening to. You had an unusual childhood in being immersed in them in a very different way than is typical. I love that. I believe you then had a time where you were living that kind of more of a city life.
As a juxtaposition, which often I find that we need to have that sort of time away from that which our soul is going to call us to perhaps as some kind of contrast or context. What did you see during that time that has given you perhaps a depth of understanding that you otherwise wouldn't have had?
Christie Green (08:27)
Yeah, I think I was really fortunate to go to undergraduate university in the Bay Area, so I went to UC Berkeley. And that is, of course, you very urban. And I loved my experience there and my education. And every summer I would go back to Alaska to work and live for the summer in Alaska. So I was directly sort of alternating between these extremes and feeling those contrasts. And while I really enjoyed and benefited, I think from the academic rigor and the stimulation, the cosmopolitan, and kind of buzz of the Bay Area and of Berkeley in particular, I noticed myself kind of feeling always a little bit ill at ease in a way, like not grounded or not. Everything was paved. Everything, like there was much more of a human imprint all around. So it was like, in a way, the opposite of Alaska, the proportion of human scape was so much greater than the other than human. And I just felt that
Lian (09:16)
you
Mmm.
Christie Green (09:33)
I didn't do very well living in that all the time. So when I was 27, I ended up moving, long story short, moving to where I am now, which is Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a small-ish city, but New Mexico is similar to Alaska in that it's quite rural and it has this kind of epic singular landscape.
And people here, you know, there's very much a feeling and a palpable presence of the Native American culture, the Pueblos, artistic expression. And also the land here is it feels greater than the human elements to me. And it's really just a place through seasons and through food, harvesting, gardening, hunting, fishing.
Lian (10:05)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Christie Green (10:25)
New Mexico, like Alaska, for me, the socio-cultural kind of relationship is centered around place and food. So it's not other than human here. And so I feel very much at home here. So New Mexico and Alaska are my homes now.
Lian (10:43)
Hmm. What did, um, Oh, hang on. I think I want to maybe come back to that. I was about to ask you a question, but I actually feel like I want to just honour something that I'm seeing in your story that perhaps is different to some. feels as though at least from what you've just shared, it may be because your childhood was so immersed in land and that connection to all that the land was inviting you into. It feels as though it wasn't such a challenge for you to reclaim it. It feels as though you carried that with you in a way that often isn't the case. Often it requires like much more of a retrieval. Certainly from my perspective, it felt like a very conscious need to reclaim those aspects of my childhood. And I hear that a lot in people.
Why do you feel for you that you seemed as though that was much more present for you, where it's like, of course this is something that is true for me and maybe even true for humans. Perhaps you even had that, that, tangible gnosis. Why do you think that is?
Christie Green (12:00)
Well, I hadn't really thought about it. I never reflected on my own experience of remembering in a way, know, where I came from or what my experience was because I think I didn't ever get that far away from it in my daily practice or in how I was living. So I would seek out, you know, backpacking or gardening or being immersed in the...
Lian (12:15)
Hmm.
Christie Green (12:24)
as in as wild a place as I could be. And I was going back to Alaska every year. And then I did have a very strong pull to leave the Bay Area and move to New Mexico. And it just felt like this relief to be in a way coming home to a place that is more, let's just say, land centric. And then
Lian (12:49)
Mmm.
Christie Green (12:50)
When I moved to Santa Fe, I lived at a Zen center for a while, and the Zen center was, a lot of the programming there was around vision quests, wilderness experiences, backpacking experiences. So in that setting, I got to have this immersive time outdoors, but also it was my first time, being able to kind of blend a conscious awareness of relationship to place and to our own wild interiors and to be talking about it in a way that I never did because we just lived it. Whereas when I was at the Zen Center and we'd be doing these, you know, the four day vision quest or the wilderness treks there was this explicit awareness and conversation around it. And so that was...
Lian (13:25)
Hmm.
Christie Green (13:37)
In some ways uncomfortable because it's talking about like the deepest self and I had never talked about that or shared that openly. It was just a feeling and just the way I lived or wanted to live. And so something it was like a catalyst here in New Mexico to cultivate awareness around relationship to place. So that was a huge influence on my life. And then I started my business right away when I was like 28, I guess.
Lian (13:57)
Hmm.
Christie Green (14:07)
And that was all about food and growing food for clients and trying to heighten awareness around soil building, water conservation, heirloom seed saving, and then also taking food into our bodies. Because for me, food and eating, you know, they're like the most intimate act and they're the most universal act. Like we all have all these ways of coming together around food, whether it's mourning or celebrating or
Lian (14:28)
Mm.
Christie Green (14:36)
creative expression, you know, and so I really wanted to be rooted in that way of connecting to people and hopefully catalyzing that connection, you know, between them and them and their own land. that's when, you know, fast forward a number of years when I started hunting to try and
Lian (14:50)
Hmm.
Christie Green (14:57)
sort of like, I'm growing my own food in the garden. You what would it be like for me to try to harvest my own meat because I do eat meat. So that's when I started hunting, which was when I was 40. So, yep.
Lian (15:11)
Hmm. And maybe the answer to this question is in part what you just said about hunting. What, what have you seen that the land there is teaching you, inviting you into that's different to say, for example, the land in Alaska?
Christie Green (15:35)
Yeah, it's different in that, of course, the ecoregions and the ecology, you know, we're in a high desert land with very little water. It's actually the lowest proportion of water to land is here in New Mexico. And the most amount of water, not proportionately, but the most amount of water is in Alaska. So it's like extreme contrast. But
Lian (16:00)
I didn't know that, but I was like, could feel there was clearly such a contrast, just knowing a little bit that I do. Something quite amazing about that, isn't it? Having the two completely different experiences.
Christie Green (16:11)
Totally different landscapes, but I feel like the learning from both, whether it's the forest or the mesa, the dry river bed or the very full river in Alaska, I feel like what I am learning is to remember my place in the other than human world. That is, I'm not in control.
And I am not in power over when I'm surrounded by the extreme of both places. It's like, right. It's not convenience and comfort are not at my fingertips necessarily, right? Like I have to remember how to take care of myself in those places, whether it's what I carry on my back or paying attention to how I'm walking in a drainage and not getting hurt.
And then of course, when I get to be with the animals, learning from them, like even last week I was hunting turkeys, not in New Mexico, but hunting turkeys, which requires extreme heightened awareness because they can see and hear for miles and they're very aware of who's in their surroundings. So they teach me how to move differently and take up less space. So I would say like learning how to take up less space, be less, be more quiet and be still. Like at one point one morning last week, I was holding still for what felt like, you know, an infinity because I had hand turkeys within, you know, I could have reached out and touched them, but I had to hold still. So was like.
Lian (17:51)
Wow.
Christie Green (17:53)
in a way deferring to the animals and the land to show me how to follow their lead. I don't know if that makes any sense. Instead of me kind of calling the shots, like I'm not saying how things are gonna go. They are, you know, the weather is, the wind, all of it. It's my opportunity. And I don't mean to sound cliche, but really it's my...
Lian (18:03)
Hmm
Christie Green (18:18)
opportunity to remember how to be my own animal self, you know, because that's really what I'm doing is being an animal out there, know, trying to be.
Lian (18:31)
Hmm, beautiful. And I have the sense the question I'm about to ask you, there's perhaps different levels of answers you could give to this. And so I invite you to share on this many different levels. It might be there was a kind of one answer that you were conscious to at the beginning, that's a different answer to now. So again, feel free to be as, as wide over the terrain of those answers as you'd like. But simply put, why hunting? you said, originally you were more around the kind of growing of food to eat. And then there's something at some point that called you to hunting, but also hunting in a way where, from what I can understand, it's become almost like a devotion that has clearly shown you so much, given you so much. But going back to that sort very simple question, why hunting?
Christie Green (19:29)
love that word devotion. I've never thought of that or never had that word offered. yeah, like I said, I first thought I was going to be self-sufficient and to, procure a local source of protein, you know, and imagining that I was, I wanted to be living, I want to be living in what I call right relationship with place, right relationship with my body, right relationship with everything as best I can. And, but what happened on the first hunt, the first hunt was for elk. And in the moment of choosing, to take the life, you know, it's like a split second moment of choosing whether or not to pull the trigger. It was akin to how I felt when I was giving birth to my daughter, like that, where the whole body takes over. There isn't like a rational mind necessarily, or it's all processing so rapidly within a split second. And I realised, or I felt the profundity of this choice and this choosing of taking a life and then… when the elk was on the ground and I approached him and I could feel his body still warm, see his eyes change. It was like feeling this being and this soul, like this palpable presence of this animal's soul was still there. And then the moment of cutting open the animal, reaching into the animal, I had no idea that that… would change my life forever because it became not only a relationship with food but with this other, how do I say it? And again, I don't want to sound cliche, but it was almost like spirit or myth or the liminal space in between. So the spaces in between life and death, the space between human and animal, lightness and dark because a lot of the hunting takes place, walking in and walking out in the dark. So it's like recalibrate rating and tuning into something that is like an undercurrent that is deeper and for me more vivid and real than something that is rational or logical or mind based. So, It was like this my own breaking open and my own vulnerability around this raw exposure to these animals and witnessing the genius of them from the inside out, their own genius and way they live in the world, but then also just even in their bodies. And I will say like as a woman, my whole life, even as a child, I was very critical of my own body, like whether it was, you even my hands, you name it, looking at myself critically, which I think came from culture, right, Western culture. And the moment I started taking apart the animal bodies and looking at them, the fat, the fascia, the tendons, the synovial fluid, the way they're, the architecture of their bodies, it was like almost as extreme as a switch being flipped, where then I could see my own body and my own self as exquisitely beautiful and genius. And I thought, well, I would never think an elk is fat or old or to this or to that. I mean, they're just this incredibly immaculate, perfect being. So there were all these ways that hunting and still continues to change me. I've been hunting for 16 years, but yeah, so, Why hunting then when I started, I thought was quite simple around food. Why hunting now? It's my medicine. It's absolutely my, as you say, devotional practice. And it's so much less about the killing. Like now when I go hunt, it's harder and harder for me to choose to pull the trigger. I just am feeling my own humanness in a way, dissolve, slough, melt, and I'm just feeling so much more of the, I guess, sentient beingness of the animals and just learning from them so much, thinking about who I am as a woman in the 21st century and in a way like, I think about Joseph Campbell a lot and I cite him in Moonlight Elk in my book about myth. and who we are and what myths we believe in and what myths we're weaving and creating. And I don't know, Lian I actually would like to be, and I'm trying to be an active participant in my own myth making and who I am in a larger than practical way in Western culture, because there's so much that's so much bigger than us that's mysterious and wondrous and I'm just really interested in that. So the hunt is fueling, you know, it's fueling my writing, it's fueling my creative practice, it's fueling how I live and it's restoring my own love for my animal self. It's huge.
Lian (24:49)
Hmm. so beautiful. was...
I felt so much that I am feeling challenged to really put voice to everything I was experiencing as you were talking. And then I was thinking, there is something so exquisitely humorous in that before we recorded, shared with you, I was like, I've got confession to make. I'm actually a lifelong vegetarian vegan. I've never eaten meat in my life.
And I said it as a confession more because I wanted to sort say it to you before we began recording in case it came up during the conversation, then you were a bit like blindsided thinking that I'd sort of lured you on to, you know, I don't know, do something or other. And I was just like, there's just something. And then we soon found that we were in a strange way coming from such a similar place and had so much shared feeling around things of this nature, which
in itself feels like medicine the world needs. anyway, I was just thinking, it's so funny that listening to you hunt and kill and take apart an animal for me as a lifelong vegetarian was just such a, I just felt so overcome with the beauty and the love of everything you described. And I was like, it's something so, yeah, again, kind of, strangely humorous and also just wonderful about that. So I just wanted to share that with you. There is something so pure in what you're describing that transcends these ideas of how we should or shouldn't be in relationship to whether it be animals, the land or anything else. Yeah,
Christie Green (26:43)
you know, people ask me, how can you kill an animal that you seems like you love and revere? So what's the killing part? And it is, it's really hard to reconcile. I do call, I consider it paradox. It's like this extreme paradox, which is true in so many of the mysterious depths, I think of the human lived experience. It's hard to reconcile, but I actually believe that for me, being able to hold paradox and what feels like these opposites and bring them together in a way like for me, the hunting and the killing is my way of, making sacred, the sacrifice is making sacred. And it feels like culturally, at least in Western culture, there's a real tension and difficulty with holding paradox and even considering a different point of view or what is supposedly opposite. Like we're much more comfortable in black and white, much more categorising, much more comfortable in saying who's right or who's wrong. And I don't know, I'm not saying that I'm...
Lian (27:47)
Mmm.
Christie Green (27:55)
right. I'm not saying that everybody should hunt or everybody should think I'm correct at all. I don't even know if I'll keep hunting. But for me right now, in a surprising way, it's become this path of mine that is I don't even remember who I was before. don't, I'm just so much more myself now and more conscious, I believe, through the practice. And again, it's not dependent on killing. I can have a hunt and be completely transformed and be surrounded by the animals and not make a kill. There is something that does happen in the body with my body, the animal body. And when there's that transformation of the body to nourishment and then I bring, you know, the heart home, the bones, the skull, the feet, and they're in my house as like stories, you know, so the elk on the wall, the deer hooves on the table, they're all like living.
Lian (28:50)
Mmm.
Christie Green (28:54)
relatives, really. It's like a story of relatives at home. yeah, so it's, it is, it's like, how do you make sense of it? I don't, I don't really know. One of these days I might be vegan. I don't know. I might choose that. I'm not, not sure, but fully support anybody in their choice for what they want to put in their bodies. It's not up to me. Yeah.
Lian (29:07)
Hehehehehe
Hmm. There's so much in what you've just said and there's a question I want to ask you that actually links to that. I'll just share that what you said there about bringing home the hooves and the skull. Years back, I think, I don't know exactly when, maybe like 2018. I started having this real call to work with the bodies of animals that I found locally. And the first one was a badger and they're not, I don't know how well, you know, the animals of this country, completely different to Alaska. We don't have big animals, they're generally small animals, but we do have some really wonderful animals wild here. One of them being the badger, but we don't see them very often. They're nocturnal.
you only really find them in kind of particularly rural areas. not like say foxes that often will be in towns. And so it's something very special when you do see a badger. Anyway, there's a badger set just up the lane from where I live. And there was a badger that I don't know whether he was hit by a car or had died naturally, but there was this badger there. And I had such a strong sense of wanting to bring him home and work with the skull. And it was in a funny way, it was like that same sort of like trying to hold the paradox of opposites where I had never even eaten, like I hadn't even had like meat on my plate. And there wasn't me being kind of like intimately involved with, you know, removing over a period of months. I mean, it was a very devotional practice over months to get to the point where the skull was... And it was the work of months and months and and it showed me so much of the places where...
Christie Green (31:24)
It's beautiful. Wow. Yeah.
Lian (31:37)
I had closure to that kind of intimate experience of death, of the animal. And I'd been able to, in my own neat way, kind of keep myself at a distance from that. And yeah, there was just so much that kind of brought me away. I hadn't even thought about this for years, but when you said that was like that first… experience since then I've worked with lots of animals in that way, but that first one, it just taught me so much about the places of kind of holding myself apart from life and death. So the question I wanted to ask you was, you talked about this being your medicine. And for me, at least this notion of medicine is a word that we use a lot in the work that we do too. And It has this sense of often medicine is something we see we give to others, but just as you've experienced, it's medicine we give first and foremost to ourselves is often the medicine that we can give to others is first and foremost for ourselves and teaches us transforms as heals us. And then we give it to the world or give it to certain people in the world. So what have you seen of that medicine that you have become, what is this? I guess as a simply put, what is that medicine that you've become? What is it healing in the world?
Christie Green (33:09)
Boy, that's a beautiful question. I don't know if I can say or claim that I am having any success. That's a really crude word or oversimplified word to say about healing that I'm offering in the world. guess what I aspire to, it's very simple. It's not easy, but it's very simple. And my aspiration is to inspire reverence for and stewardship of the earth. It's quite straightforward. And the way I'm trying to do that, is, and it wasn't like I wrote out a program and had a plan, it's kind of all, it's just like when I go on a hunt, I have an idea of I'm going to go this way or go to that ridge or drop down into a particular drainage, but then it always changes because wind direction or if I see the tracks of the animal and then I'll go that way, so there might be an idea of what I think I'm going to do, but then it evolves because I'm hopefully paying attention to something outside of me or something coming from deep inside of me.
Once I can shed the sort of what I call the straight line world of the human world. And so through the writing, when I started writing the stories of the hunt and put together the book Moonlight Elk, it was not like I was thinking, I'm giving this to the world to try to heal the world. It was more like. I'm writing from my own medicine. I'm hunting from my own healing. These are some of my experiences and questions. And I wonder, is there anyone out there who wants to be in conversation or has these same questions, like even what you just brought up about this pull to work with animals and their bodies. And then you noticing and articulating this, like maybe what was blocked or held back around relationship to death and to life. And so I feel like when we share those experiences, and offer them. And hopefully there's someone like you who says, yes, let's have this conversation. I've also been, for the last three years, I launched a clothing collection. And the clothing collection, all the garments are inspired by the animals I hunt in their habitats. And that came from a dream. The writing came from a dream. A lot of times the hunting comes from the dream.
So much of my guidance is the dream. So the clothes too, it's like I've never been in the fashion industry. I'm not trying to be like this fashion mogul or anything. It was like, look at this exquisite pattern of the turkey feather or the dusky blue grouse, his tail or the elk hide and how she looks. And I had always, through all these years of hunting, it was like, what does it feel like to walk around? and be so at home in your body and be that exquisitely beautiful. They're just born that way, right? They have nothing external. There's no device, there's no shoes, their mouths are directly to the earth, to the water, same with their bodies. And that is genius to me. So I started playing around with these fabrics. And again, the offering of the clothes, the offering of the fabrics is my way of saying.
Lian (36:04)
Mmm.
Christie Green (36:25)
Okay, look humans, look at who our kin are and is this a way that when we put them on our bodies and feel them, is there a way we can feel that connection? So it's like taking their bodies into ours as food, touching the skull of the badger, taking apart the body and then in this case, wearing the semblance of the body is for me, the most direct way I can invite others to participate in a new kind of wonder and reverence for these animals and their home, our home, the earth. So it's like, I would love it if somebody considered anything I'm offering to be their own medicine, you know, I would love that. And I don't know if that's why I'm doing it because like you say, it's for myself first, it's my own discovery, it's my own questioning.
Lian (37:23)
Hmm, I think any true medicine is I think that is how we know the difference. It is funny this, the same quotes come to mind several times recently. It's these massively paraphrased with a Clarissa Pinkola Estes and it says something like tell the truth about your wound. And then you can hold out for the right medicine and you'll know it's the right medicine because it will make your life stronger rather than weaker, something like that. And we only know because of how it does make our own life stronger. And it has to start there. And I mean, certainly the experiences I've had with you so far, my goodness, I feel like you're just radiating out the gifts that you've been blessed with from the land and from the animals you've come into contact with. I really felt when you were likening the elk's death to birth, kind of, it was, I sort of felt it in my womb, like, of course, this makes so much sense to me in an embodied way that wouldn't if someone just said it, you know, like just saying birth and death are kind of the same. There was something I felt viscerally as you said it. just an example of the way I can sort of see that just rippling out of you in so many different ways. So beautiful. there's things I've known, these are sort of like a bit sort
disparate questions and I'm hoping you might be able to link them together in some beautiful way. I've heard you talk about this sort of like feminine way of relating to the land and also you, I guess, are tracking life, tracking time via the moon rather than kind of our normal, in quote marks, mainstream way of doing that.
So we don't have like a fixed question. It's more like these are two things that I've noticed you talk about. Would you share with me kind of what's been emerging for you around those things? Why are those things what you have been working with and talking about?
Christie Green (39:36)
Yeah, again, in retrospect, I think it seems more clear during I was basically just trying to find my way. But I was raised by a very extreme father who was a military man. And my background is more in, I would say, blue collar, working. Very masculine, you I worked on the railroad, I worked at a hunting lodge, I've worked, you know, even landscape architecture is dominated by men. And my way before I started hunting, especially before I started hunting by myself, was kind of like to, you know, I can't stand this phrase, but it was like to man up. I would push through and I would completely in a way annihilate my own soul and my own femininity to...
Lian (40:05)
Mmm.
Christie Green (40:26)
be as good as to perform, to be productive, being self-employed, it is hard work. And that was what I was taught as a child. We worked really hard, we were uncomfortable a lot of the time. You just sort of do what it takes. And so when I started hunting with my then partner, he's the man he had hunted his whole life, he's showing me the way to hunt, which was an enormous gift, that is beyond anything I ever thought it would become. But the more I hunted with him or with anybody else, the more I felt like I couldn't even hear myself. And I wanted to do it differently. I didn't want to do this sort of what felt like, and this isn't, I'm not saying this is about him or any man hunter. It was just more, let's just say more of a call to my own rhythm and my own way. And that did very much coincide with.
Lian (41:08)
Mmm.
Christie Green (41:17)
paying attention to the moon and darkness and the mystery of the moon and darkness as equal, if not more powerful than that which is illuminated by the sun. So what is it that we can't see? You know, the moon is always there, but we can't see her all the time, right? Or all of her.
And then that was kind of like the parallel with my dream life, like my sleeping, that dark side of myself, the dreams that I always work with in the morning, I draw and write my dreams. And it's sort of like, well, the more I surrendered to the moon way, the darkness way, the animal way, the liminal space, the more I felt at home in my own self. And then hunting by myself, which is now my preference, It allows me to actually listen to only myself or the animals or the moon or the land rather than as a woman, know, I've been a caretaker most of my life. I'm a mother and I wouldn't trade that for anything. But when I'm out there, I'm not taking care of anybody. I'm not attuning to anybody else. I'm not pulled to the human realm. so it was almost like surrender is the best word. Like, what is the moon? Actually have to teach us what you know there's so much about the sun giving life right and the calendar and the clock related to the to the sun cycles and to making food and also when we work and when we're awake well for me the the time when i'm asleep and dreaming and when i'm walking in darkness is is as valuable if not more and it's more potent to me as a guide it's the more true guide for me like sometimes when i'm hunting i wake up with a particular dream
Lian (43:03)
Mmm.
Christie Green (43:06)
The dream will tell me, know, counterclockwise today. You know, of course it comes in metaphor and imagery. So it's its own language, its own riddle, its own trickster kind of language. But I've been working with dreams for so long that I feel like, you know, we have this way of relating to each other in this language that how I then interpret that and move forward is, I don't know, it's, for me, that's all the feminine. That’s mystery way, the way of not having to control, the way of not having to know, also listening to my body when I'm out there instead of, like you gotta push through and you gotta do this, this, this, and this because that's the way the men do it, that's the way they succeed, that's the way they bring home an animal. It's like, you know, like on one hunt a few years ago, I literally sat still, I took a nap in the middle of the day, I rested in the shade.
Lian (43:35)
Mmm.
Christie Green (44:01)
And I woke up and I didn't notice like, Christie, you didn't cover ground. You didn't do you didn't work hard enough. You didn't do a good enough job. Well, that's like for me, that's the masculine voice kind of that has to do with force. For lack of a better word, and the feminine is not forceful, the feminist flow. So it's flow versus force. And for me to allow myself to flow is is is letting go of.
knowing, it's letting go of power over, it's letting go of being in control really. And it just feels more expensive. and allowing and lighter and joyful and sensual. That's the sensual and the beautiful. I don't know, I just like, I like residing in that so much more than working from here up or kind of what I call like this insistent march of the masculine. don't like it.
Lian (45:11)
What did you see and what have you seen around the menstrual cycle and then the kind of wider cycles of a woman's life in relationship to everything you've just said? It's quite a big question and maybe it's a big one to sort of squeeze in at the end, but everything you've described, of course, is also happening within a woman's body.
How did that flow into your relationship with the land and hunting?
Christie Green (45:42)
Yeah. my God, feel so, I'm so lucky to be a woman. I wouldn't trade that for anything that we have. We're born with these millions of eggs. We get to go through this, like you say, this monthly cycle and we have a relationship, a close relationship to what could be akin to death, you know, with blood and witnessing the changes in the blood and in our bodies. And my God, I just feel like, always loved. I always loved my menstrual cycle. Always did. Just love feeling it. Love feeling the changes in my breasts. I could feel what side I was ovulating on. And so it was just so interesting to me a lot of times when I would go hunt. The first day of the hunt. would be the first day of my cycle. And it's not really that handy to be out there having that happen, you know, as far as logistics, it's a little tricky, you know, being out away from a bathroom and running water and all that. But I love.
Lian (46:37)
As in you chose to do it on the first day of your cycle or because that's how it.
Christie Green (46:41)
It just landed that way because the hunts, well, depending on what I'm hunting for, there are predetermined dates within the state of New Mexico for whatever hunts you draw, the public draw, and it happened to land on that date. So a lot of times I do try to hunt on the start of the new moon because I feel like it's, in my experience, it's been a time to hunt when it's complete darkness and new moon. And it would be... that that was true, my body would be starting her cycle then. And the part I loved about it was it was like in a way feeling my own like that reminder, tangible, visceral, actual reminder of animal body. I'm not going to shut that down, right? The body is going to do what the body needs to do and to be a part of that on the land at the same time. Just like, know, not to be too much information or vivid, but like pulling my pants down to pee. mean, the animals are doing this all the time, right? There is no buffer between
body and body, earth body and my body. And the more I can have that direct experience body to body, then of course the more animal I feel. An animal just walked in, I see there.
Lian (48:04)
One of my dogs obviously wanted to make himself known at that exact juncture. yeah. I love everything you've just shared. I was just... Firstly, I very much share that...
Christie Green (48:08)
I saw the tail sort of waltzed in. Yeah, and now...
Lian (48:25)
I was watching your face as you were talking about your love of the menstrual cycle and the blood and the changes in your body. And I was like, my gosh, that's just so mirrors how I feel. And it's something really enjoyable to see a woman speak in that way. just, yes, absolutely. It's all of that. And it reminded me, funny enough, I've not told this story in ages. And then I did a week or so ago when I was a guest on a podcast and it came up and I was like, and then
related story I only just told as well. It's funny isn't it how these things sort of come in cycles themselves. So years ago I was undergoing quite a sort of intense initiatory shamanic training and one of the initiations was a kind of burial initiation where you dug your own grave and spent the night in the earth and the bit that really, yes and so it was like very kind of bringing me present to these themes that we're talking about with death and all of these things.
And what really linked what you just shared was during the night at some point, I began bleeding a few days early, but of course, right on time. And it was like, my body was like, okay, we're really going to do this. And so there's going to be like, you know, the immersion into this death and into this mud, then the blood comes too. And so I was brought out in the morning kind of, you know, blood flowing and just like this is so perfect. Like my gosh, I remember feeling so blessed, the kind of the body's intelligence of like knowing that was the night, the time. And so I, in a small way, I feel like what you spoke about there, like I had that experience that you're describing on that night. And there is something just, it's all happening inside and outside all at the same time.
Christie Green (50:22)
It's powerful and what you're sharing just I think about in Western culture, supposedly as we make progress, right? With indoor toilets, running water. I mean, you think about all the ways we sanitize our bodies and sanitize the evidence of our bodies, how they live, whether it's the scent that the body makes, the fluid
Lian (50:51)
Hmm.
Christie Green (50:51)
the body excretes, know, you see in bathrooms like scented spray to get rid of anything that doesn't smell good. All these ways, like even, you know, how do I make myself try to not age or look a certain way or it's very hard in Western culture to face the body that is. We're always, we're moments, every moment is more going toward death, right? And we are
Lian (51:18)
Mm.
Christie Green (51:19)
We are animals that aren't neat and tidy. The breasts, what they do, the swelling, the milk, mean, all of it. There's so much that is alive and it's messy. We are messy animals. And I believe, I mean, that when we can remember and have something, like the experience you just shared, where there isn't a buffer, it is direct body to body, unfiltered, untidy experience. It is like a resuscitation of, for me, will call it like our own primal selves. We've been there all along. We are that. We have our ancestors, our lineage is primal. It is animal. It is direct relationship. It's just, you know, I feel like we just forgot all these ways we forget and have separated ourselves from that through being know, intellectual humans, you know, thinking that we actually are smarter, that we have some other better intelligence. I don't buy it for a second. We have certain capacities that are different, but I mean, I have so much to learn from the animals. And I don't know, the more I can allow like what you're talking about, that flow, the body to be the body, more whole and balanced I feel, the better I feel. I don't want to cut that off. Yeah.
Lian (52:43)
Mm, yeah. So we are sadly up on time. Is there anything before we close that we've kind of meandered in all sorts of wonderful directions, but is there anything that you feel is important to share before we close that I didn't ask you?
Christie Green (53:07)
No, mean, I guess the one thing I feel so strongly about and I think about it, like my daughter just came to mind, she's 21 and she's learning her way in the world and she frets over school, she's in college or she frets over issues with her boyfriend and... And all of that is real. We all have things that stress us out, things we want to do better at or someone that irritates us or will have some challenge. And I'll say to Olivia, because This is something I'm learning myself or I'm trying to say to myself is, we all have exactly what we need within us. Just like the germ of the seed, the acorn knows how to be an oak tree. We all… whatever it is that we were born with is singular to us and the wisdom is there. And I guess I just would want to encourage everybody, all of us to trust ourselves and remember that, you know, like the animals, they have to trust themselves. They have to trust their bodies. It comes from the body. So the governing body, the wisdom of the body, it's all within us. It's just a matter of remembering and believing and...
fostering that I think. So I don't know. what that means so much to me and what I'm working on. So I'm just sharing that.
Lian (54:31)
Beautiful. Thank you so much. And where can listeners find out more about, well, everything you're doing, including your book. Of course it will be on the show notes, but is there anything you'd like to share about where listeners can find out more?
Christie Green (54:50)
Anybody can reach out and find out more at my website is christiegreen.net and there are links to the book Moonlight Elk and then the second book is coming next summer. It's called Salmon Dreaming. takes place in Alaska and there are links also if anybody's curious about the clothing collection you can you can link through christigreen.net and the book is available in print and also an audio version so I think it's pretty easy to find anywhere if anybody wants to listen or read. And anybody wants to reach out, I love hearing from people. there's a contact sheet through the website.
Lian (55:27)
Wonderful. And beautiful names for both your books, by the way. You've got a talent for names, for sure. Which I'm sure were shown to you in a dream too.
Christie Green (55:31)
Thank you
Right, it wasn't me. Something else came forward. I just got out of the way, I think.
Lian (55:48)
Christie, this has been such a delight. It really has. yeah, it's, feel like I'm going to come away from this conversation with this big smile on my face recalling moments of it. So thank you so much.
Thank you for the, feels like funny things to say like the work you're doing, cause it is, it just feels like it is you just living, but it is very valuable work and medicine. And, I'm so glad you're doing that.
Christie Green (56:15)
Thank you so much and I feel the same about what you're doing in your community and what you're offering. The language you're using, the awareness, the consciousness, the conversations, and it's so meaningful and necessary, especially now. So thank you. I'm honoured.
Lian (56:32)
Thank you so much. So much love.
Christie Green (56:36)
Bye bye.
Lian (56:39)
What a truly heart opening, wonderful show. Here's what stayed with me from this conversation. The moment of choosing to take a life in the field can bear more resemblance to giving birth than to anything expected. And what that reveals is something that our rational minds alone cannot explain. The body knows things about life and death that our modern, so clever minds.
haven't quite yet caught up with. Working inside the bodies of animals can shift something profound in a person's relationship to their own flesh. When you witness the architecture of another creature, its beauty, its genius, its refusal to be tidy, it becomes harder to look at your own body with anything other than the same reverence. The moon, the dream life and hunting alone have more in common than they might first appear each asked you to stop forcing and start listening. And for many women, surrendering to that rhythm over time turns out to feel more true than that pushing through, aligning with this very linear world ever did. The
links, they're at wildsovereignsoil.com slash podcast slash five four eight.
And as you heard me say earlier, if you're struggling with the challenges of walking your soul path in this crazy modern world and you long for guidance, kinship and support, come join us in UNIO, the community for soul seekers. You can discover more and join us by hopping over to wildsovereignsoul.com slash UNIONOW. Let's walk the path home together.
And if you're called to journey even deeper on your path home to soul, which you've probably heard us say is definitely something that the longer we're on this path, we start to see it cyclical and we return to it with ever greater devotion and intention. So if you're feeling that call to go deeper, spiral again, deeper into aspects of yourself that perhaps you really are feeling, are calling for your attention, come join us for the upcoming Wild Sovereign Soul Pilgrimage, a 12 week immersive online group journey home to Soul. We begin on the 19th of May and enrollment is open. So you can find out more and join us at wildsovereignsoul.com slash pilgrimage.
And if you don't want to miss out next week's episode, head on over to your podcasting app or platform of choice, including YouTube and hit that subscribe or follow button. That way you'll get each episode delivered straight to your device, auto magically as soon as it's released. Thank you so much for listening. You've been wonderful. I'll catch you again next week. Until then, I'm sending you all my love and blessings as you walk your wild sovereign soul path.