Christie Green is the author of the new book Moonlight Elk: One Woman's Hunt for Food and Freedom. She is also a landscape architect, an artist, and a clothing designer, and she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Q: What inspired you to write Moonlight Elk?
A: My experiences with the animals and their habitats during many hunting seasons came through as experimental stories over the years. I wasn’t originally intending to write a book, but to somehow capture and reflect on my own inquiry and transformation that evolved through my time with the animals.
The process of the book’s evolution feels like a direct manifestation of my own internal evolution as a hunter and woman, coming to know myself through the animals and reflecting on that through the process of writing, perhaps akin to any artists’ creative expression of an external product reflecting an internal process.
The stories morphed and came together as braided essays and, eventually, as a braided whole. Writing has been one of my highest aspirations.
Q: The writer Holly Morris said of the book, “Moonlight Elk is courageous, pro-woman prose that unfolds in the crucible of the natural world.” What do you think of that description?
A: My writing is a direct extension of my experiences. It is a parallel experience to hunting, which requires a kind of surrender to something deeper, otherworldly, and mysterious. I hadn’t considered myself a pro-woman writer necessarily, I was just trying to listen to the stories that seemed to want to come through, and to listen to my own voice.
For me, the most direct conduit for listening and storying is being in close connection with the earth. The book is a love letter to the earth and the animals. If it happens to also be supportive of and encouraging to women then, of course, I love that.
The settings in which I hunt, widely removed from the human world, have indeed felt rich and challenging, often like the testing ground for me to listen and learn. The “crucible of nature” is, I believe, our most authentic teacher.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Moonlight Elk is the name I hold for the cow elk I encountered at dawn on November 15, 2021, at the edge of a meadow near Cabresto Creek just northeast of Questa, New Mexico. She came to me in crisis in what felt like a highly unlikely suspended, liminal state.
Our life-and-death encounter was an ultimate test of my skill and abilities, and of something greater, like trusting a deeper knowing and surrendering to the choice of sacrifice, of making sacred.
It feels appropriate that the gift of that elk be celebrated in the title of the book. She lives on…
Q: What impact did it have on you to write Moonlight Elk, and what do you hope readers take away from it?
A: As mentioned above, my practice of writing is directly related to and parallels my hunting practice. In both, I turn myself over to listening and observing, to paying attention to what stories want to come forth. Like tracking the animals and tracing their movement through textures and terrain. I learn through direct observation and visceral experiences.
The evolution of the book and its numerous iterations over the past 10+ years have taught me how to listen, focus, trust, and surrender.
I hope the book attracts diverse readers and that they allow themselves the possibility of thinking and feeling differently about any number of the themes in the book like human-nature relationship, animals’ intrinsic value, women’s identities and power, local and wild-harvested food, and reproductive rights.
I would like the book to invite readers to reflect and feel deeply and consider the possibility of other perspectives, like the book could be a bridge between extremes.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on Salmon Dreaming, the second book that UNM Press will publish in 2026. It takes place in the Kenai River watershed of Alaska where I grew up fishing. There is also a third book, Undamming the West, that I’m working on that UNM Press will publish in 2028.
In direct complement to the stories in each of these books, I’ve created digitally printed fabrics and clothing in the christienell.com wild-inspired collection.
These patterns originate from photographs I’ve taken of the animals and their habitats while hunting. Each pattern corresponds to specific animals in the books, like elk, turkey, grouse, quail, and salmon.
The garments are custom crafted for each customer and are meant to embody the animals’ beauty, wisdom, and power, reminding women of their own power, and invoking that from within their own bodies as they wear the clothing.
I just developed a complementary line of activewear that’s more accessible for everyday wear. I love the animal and habitat prints against my skin, empowering and inspiring me in my daily hot yoga practice. I hope other women can feel this kind of inspiration through the animals and their bodies, too.
I also continue to work on my landscape architectural projects and write for local publications like edible New Mexico.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Hunting and writing continue to challenge and inspire me. They, along with motherhood, have been my greatest teachers.
More info may be found at:
beradicle.com landscape architecture
christiegreen.net stories + imagery
christienell.com wild-inspired fabrics + clothing
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment