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Moonlight Elk: One Woman's Hunt for Food and Freedom
Christie Green learned to hunt in order to complement the food she grew in her New Mexico garden. As an act of practical agency this fulfilled her needs, yet a restlessness stirred within. She longed for a life defined by something deeper than weekly schedules, work roles, and cultural norms. Could she travel beyond the supposed domain of women and venture into the world of animals, into the wild, where men were said to prevail?
Outside the grip of the human realm, the moon beckons to Green to go beyond. Here, hunting in the wild, the moon cycles through her, rising and falling at dawn and dusk, whispering messages from the dark side. Rather than circle the hot insistence of a masculine sun, Green begins to attune to the more elusive, mysterious murmuration of the moon.
Animals and dreams, lunar partners, choreograph Green through time and space. She longs to dream, toil, live and love at the edges of the fertile ecotones where she can withdraw inward, retreat like an animal into hiding, and then come into full, radiant view on her own terms.
Layer by layer, hunt by hunt, Green peels away societal skins that adhere to a prescribed grid, a manufactured tick of time, a picture of perfection. Tracking and tracing, moving in darkness, watching, smelling, listening, and following the animals, Green sheds the burdens of her domestic self and witnesses the animals defying reason as they walk her into their world, ambling her along, straddling night and day, waking and sleeping. Through them, definitions of gender dissolve and boundaries blur. In the process, Green eclipses western society’s definitions of her as a woman, mother, lover, and entrepreneur, courageously birthing her own independence through a profound connection to the animals and the places they call home.
What she sought from these animals was food. What she found was freedom.
ACCLAIM
“Moonlight Elk tracks the electric presence of a hunter who ‘burn(s) for belonging’ in the land and among the animals. . . This book will re-map your heart.”—Erika Howsare, author of The Age of Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors
“Moonlight Elk is courageous, pro-woman prose that unfolds in the crucible of the natural world.”—Holly Morris, director of Exposure and author of Adventure Searching the Globe for Women Who Are Changing the World
“Christie Green closely tracks the boundary between human and animal, moving ever closer to a place of elemental exchange; in the end she discovers that there is no other.”—Gretchen Legler, author of Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life
“Green has the mind of a scientist and the heart of a poet. Her passion for the creatures she encounters and the land she wanders shines through every word.”—Janie Chodosh, coauthor of Wild Leading Conservationists on the Animals and the Planet They Love“Moonlight Elk is a brave unveiling that takes us to the intersection of what we know and what we sense in a given place with lyrical curiosity, offering an unexpected call to explore beneath the surface of a map or a hunt and expose a life of sensuous meaning. A daring and revealing book.”—Christine Cunningham, coauthor of The Land We A Love Affair Told in Hunting Stories
“Moonlight Elk is a riveting meditation on sustenance and love—in food, in nature, in family. This book is beautiful, deeply felt, and wise.
Outside the grip of the human realm, the moon beckons to Green to go beyond. Here, hunting in the wild, the moon cycles through her, rising and falling at dawn and dusk, whispering messages from the dark side. Rather than circle the hot insistence of a masculine sun, Green begins to attune to the more elusive, mysterious murmuration of the moon.
Animals and dreams, lunar partners, choreograph Green through time and space. She longs to dream, toil, live and love at the edges of the fertile ecotones where she can withdraw inward, retreat like an animal into hiding, and then come into full, radiant view on her own terms.
Layer by layer, hunt by hunt, Green peels away societal skins that adhere to a prescribed grid, a manufactured tick of time, a picture of perfection. Tracking and tracing, moving in darkness, watching, smelling, listening, and following the animals, Green sheds the burdens of her domestic self and witnesses the animals defying reason as they walk her into their world, ambling her along, straddling night and day, waking and sleeping. Through them, definitions of gender dissolve and boundaries blur. In the process, Green eclipses western society’s definitions of her as a woman, mother, lover, and entrepreneur, courageously birthing her own independence through a profound connection to the animals and the places they call home.
What she sought from these animals was food. What she found was freedom.
ACCLAIM
“Moonlight Elk tracks the electric presence of a hunter who ‘burn(s) for belonging’ in the land and among the animals. . . This book will re-map your heart.”—Erika Howsare, author of The Age of Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors
“Moonlight Elk is courageous, pro-woman prose that unfolds in the crucible of the natural world.”—Holly Morris, director of Exposure and author of Adventure Searching the Globe for Women Who Are Changing the World
“Christie Green closely tracks the boundary between human and animal, moving ever closer to a place of elemental exchange; in the end she discovers that there is no other.”—Gretchen Legler, author of Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life
“Green has the mind of a scientist and the heart of a poet. Her passion for the creatures she encounters and the land she wanders shines through every word.”—Janie Chodosh, coauthor of Wild Leading Conservationists on the Animals and the Planet They Love“Moonlight Elk is a brave unveiling that takes us to the intersection of what we know and what we sense in a given place with lyrical curiosity, offering an unexpected call to explore beneath the surface of a map or a hunt and expose a life of sensuous meaning. A daring and revealing book.”—Christine Cunningham, coauthor of The Land We A Love Affair Told in Hunting Stories
“Moonlight Elk is a riveting meditation on sustenance and love—in food, in nature, in family. This book is beautiful, deeply felt, and wise.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published September 13, 2024
8 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Christie Green
1 bookChristie Green is the author of MOONLIGHT 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 2027 and her third book, THE NEW MERIDIAN: Undamming the West will be released by UNMP in 2029.
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HOME
Christie Green resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Kenai, Alaska.
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PLATFORM
Ms. Green’s platform as a land and water steward, landscape architect, local food activist, educator and eco-huntress attracts passionate audiences in these fields.
She represents a fundamental missing bridge between polarized audiences and cultural extremes.
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EDUCATION + PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
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 were 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.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 23, 2024
You don’t have to be a hunter to be seduced by the sensual push and pull of the life force pulsing through Moon Light Elk by Christie Green. Her cyclical memoir weaves together chapters of her life as a woman, mother, daughter, granddaughter, hunter and lover, through the lens of the beating heart of her animal self. She tracks her life with her whole being- as a landscape architect, farmer, and big game hunter, providing sustenance for her daughter and herself that include attunement to the cycles of the moon as well as the seasons. Her voice is bold and vulnerable, visceral and tender and drew the Vegetarian leaning me, into the depths of desire that leads home to our wild self.
October 21, 2024
It reads well, a page-turner. And it makes one think. I found myself examining the things I take for granted in my everyday life, wondering what drives me, what urges me forward. I believe it is a search for truth, but more than just that. My life is a search for accomplishment, even small ones. Things that increase the level of peace and love and understanding between and among our co-inhabitants of this planet. This book has inspired me to be more aware of sounds, sights, smells this neighborhood in which I find myself offers.
February 11, 2025
The book was detailed. Really puts you in a different perspective. Read it for book club.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews