What does it mean to hunt as a deeply embodied, emotional, and relational practice?

In this episode of Women in Wild Places, I sit down with writer and landscape architect Christie Green to explore hunting as a path to connection: to food, to place, to the animal world, and to our own bodies.

Christie shares her journey of beginning to hunt later in life after growing up in Alaska, and how what started as a desire to harvest her own food became a personal and creative practice. Together, they talk about the sensory world of the hunt, the moment of deciding whether to take a life, the paradox of grief and gratitude, and what it feels like to see your own anatomy reflected in the body of an animal.

We talk about why the topic has become so polarizing, and how these charged topics can actually open space for deeper dialogue, humility, and mutual respect.

This is a conversation about nuance, belonging, and paying attention.

Connect with Christie Green

• 🌿 Website: https://www.christiegreen.net/
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• Christie's fashion brand

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In this episode of Women in Wild Places, I’m joined by Amanda Monthei, a former hotshot wildland firefighter, writer, and the creator of the Life With Fire podcast, for a deep, thoughtful conversation about wildfire, creativity, and what it means to live and work inside powerful & uncontrollable landscapes.

Amanda spent multiple seasons working on fire crews and hotshotting, witnessing massive wildfires most people will never experience up close. Through years on the line, she came to understand something many of us resist: fire is never really “in control,” and the idea that humans can fully control it is largely a myth.

We talk about what it’s actually like to live in survival mode all summer, the nervous-system crash that comes in the off season, and the emotional and psychological toll of increasingly long, intense fire seasons. Amanda shares what it means to see communities burn, to work inside catastrophe, and to carry that weight long after the season ends.

We also explore her transition from firefighter to storyteller, and her current chapter pursuing an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Montana and returning to craft, attention, and creative practice as a way of making sense of the world. We talk about writing, observation, landscape, and how learning to really see the places we live changes how we tell stories.

This episode is about hotshotting, the creative process, and how living with uncontrollable forces shapes the way we pay attention, write, and understand our place in the world. It’s also about humility, limits, fire ecology, and what wildfire teaches us about being human in a changing climate.

Connect with Amanda

• Listen to her podcast: Life With Fire
• Follow her on Instagram: @a_monthei
• Check out her website and Substack

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If you loved this episode, please consider following the show, leaving a rating or review, and sharing it with someone who loves wild places, good stories, and thoughtful conversations about the world we live in.

Note: Toward the end of the episode, Amanda accidentally say “prescribed fire councils” when she meant to say “prescribed burn associations.”

Performing aerial acrobatics suspended over glaciers sounds like a scene from a dream. For aerial artist and climate advocate Sasha Galitzki, it’s home. In frozen landscapes where ice shifts and snow falls, Sasha brings movement to places that are disappearing faster than we can comprehend, using art to help us feel what we can’t ignore.

In this episode, we talk about how Sasha stumbled into pole dancing in her twenties, fell in love with the feeling of flying, and eventually combined her two great passions, the outdoors and aerial art, into breathtaking performances on glaciers and ice. She shares the logistics behind climbing anchors, rigging in the cold, and planning choreography down to her fingertips. We talk about risk, safety, and why grace means even more when conditions are harsh.

We also dive into the story behind her new film Embers: losing her home in the Jasper wildfire, returning to the ice year after year to witness glaciers recede, and how grief transformed into purpose.

Cover art photo by Kris Andres @kristopherandres

Watch + follow Sasha’s work here:

• Website: https://www.sasha-gali.com/
• Instagram (Sasha): https://www.instagram.com/sasha_gali/
• Wild Aerial Film: https://www.wild-aerial.com/wild-aerial-film
• Embers Film & Festival Info: https://www.wild-aerial.com/embers

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• Host: outsidegabs

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