Moonlight Elk: One Woman’s Hunt for Food and Freedom: Excerpt 

Christie Green recently released her memoir 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. A  woman longing for a life defined by something deeper than weekly schedules, work roles, and cultural norms, Christie Green learned to hunt elk, turkey, deer, and other animals throughout her home state of New Mexico. 

Layer by layer, hunt by hunt, Green peels away societal skins that adhered 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 instead witnesses the animals defying reason as they walk her into their world, ambling her along, straddling night and day, waking and sleeping. Their ways of moving and sensing become her model. In the process, Green eclipses western society’s definitions of her as a woman, mother, lover, and business owner in a male-dominated industry and ultimately finds independence, courage, and 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. 

Christie Green harvests food for herself and her daughter and hunts solo in the eight eco regions of New Mexico, as well as multiple other states. 

Excerpt from Moonlight Elk by Christie Green: 

Striding on, I feel my hips resist the weight of the pack, hear my stomach rumble. I stop, realizing I’m almost at the top of the drainage and have barely paused. The city’s pace still informs my tempo. It will take a couple of days to slow down. The needles of the Douglas fir tickle my neck as I stand still. A motion out of the corner of my eye yanks my bino scan back to the left. An elk ear appears among dense branches. A cow steps out into the clearing, not more than thirty-five yards to the south. She heads my way, not having the benefit of being downwind to cue her to my intrusion. Her front legs stiffen straight, nostrils flare, head jerks up. She’s onto me. We lock eyes, looking with curiosity at the other as if to query, “Who are you? What are you made of?” Her chestnut hide, soft, exaggerated ears, and whiskered mouth set in my mind’s eye. 

She is what I came for. I see her. Recognize her. 

She turns sharply upslope and disappears, like a mirage. I head to the pickup, her golden rump and our encounter softening my checklist mind. My march dissolves to a trickle. I slow my descent, remind myself to take care, move with intention. Al and I would take off cross-country when hunting, both at dawn and dusk, sometimes not coming back until hours after sunset, having to navigate our way with headlamps, a map, and a compass. I don’t want the stress of unnecessary risk eating at me on this hunt, nor can I afford to make careless mistakes. My daughter Olivia is only thirteen and needs me. “Don’t get lost. Don’t get hurt. Be smart,” I remind myself like a mantra. 

Back in the pickup, thirty-three degrees, wind swirling north to south, I strip layers, turn the fan and seat heaters on and tear open a bag of cashews, dried blueberries, and raw walnuts. I’ve already seen an elk and it’s not even noon. But seeing her feels less like a hunting score than a brush with another world. 

After my morning snack I explore new territory. A change in road surface to the south piques my interest. Hopping out of the Tundra, I descend the route about a half mile to the rim of a small lake, about two hundred yards across. Two other marshes to the north and west contrast their chartreuse sedges and rushes with the surrounding fescue and grama slope. The air is different here in this low spot, a drainage at the south end of where I walked earlier. Cooler. Hushed. I lose track of time, lie back on a sunny, dry knoll, with oaks behind me and clouds skimming my daydreams. Nowhere else to be until my belly rumbles, empty, impatient. 

Lunch eventually beckons me back to the Airstream seven miles west. I notice caravans making their way into overburdened sites not far from my camp. Quads, pop-out and pop-up campers, high-clearance pickups, and trailers stacked high with tarps, coolers, grills, and shade structures clutter the clearings. They circle up around multiple fire rings and position generators nearby. I wonder how many tags are being fist-bumped before they’re filled? How many guys are set to the task of putting the moves on the one elk that will be theirs? 

Stomping the mud from my boots, I juggle breakfast fixings plucked from the cooler and tug the door open. The little propane stove fires up without a glitch as butter slides across the skillet. No one to feed but myself, I adjust to single serving proportions: two eggs instead of six, one tortilla  instead of three. I devour a burrito of scrambled eggs creamy with pepper jack cheese and chopped green chile and wash it down with stiff coffee and cream. I study the topo maps and Google Earth images, combing the imagery for clues. 

A nap is in order today. I snuggle into the down sleeping bags and heavy wool blankets. An hour passes; dreams sift through me.The elk converge at the base of a slope, one bull leading them into  the nearby bedroom whose window widens to the outer expanse. He enters; a dozen cows follow. I sit at the bed’s edge, yellow spread under my thighs. They’re filing in as if for an interview in a beauty pageant, stopping in front of me one by one. The bull looks directly at me, icy blue man eyes meet my stare. He has a blonde human beard, six-by-six antlers. The elk linger, eyes affixed to mine. Are they silently asking me to join them or flaunting their animal freedom? The cows follow their bull out the other bedroom door, an obedient tempo, a determined destination. 

3:00 p.m. I wake bolt upright, fearing I’ve wasted the day and lost the elk. Geared up, propane shut off and camper locked, I head out again for the evening walk. 

3:50 p.m. The first drainage, where the cow was in the morning, is mucky with melted snow and slippery soil. My eight-pound boots press into the thick ooze, leaving circular dimples from the tread. I will recognize my own tracks many times over on this hunt. I tell the time of my trips and those of the elk by how defined or diminished our tracks appear through day and night, freeze and thaw. Whose tracks cross the others? They tease me with, “Maybe this way . . .” 

Following my morning route, I ease my gait. Shift to the pace of this place—slower like the shadows of clouds over hipped topography. No rush. At the clearing where the long, aspen-lined meadow meets the two-track, I spot the point of antlers. A young bull, head in the brush, grazes without distraction. There are at least six cows foraging around him, in and out of the timber shadows, unfazed by my presence. I range them at eighty-three yards and practice getting set up for a shot, lying on my belly in the snow, with the shotgun resting on a fallen aspen. One cow moves broadside repeatedly, revealing her widest self to me. The shot could have been mine at least five times over but I hold still, focused on their muzzles, tugging leaves between curled lips. It’s not the time to shoot yet. The hunt opener isn’t until tomorrow. 

The sky blushes, exhales the day’s effort and I move on, just a little farther up, before turning to walk back in darkness. A neck, head, and ears float through the fir branches. Another cow. She crosses my path, senses my presence, turns toward me. We hold the stare. She curls her lips, opens her mouth to expose her teeth, flaring her nostrils to get a scent. Who am I? What am I? 

She steps even closer. We hold the curious tension. I forget my boots, pack, binos, and gloves; I am as exposed as she is. Our eyes meet. At fifty yards she barks two warnings to alert the others, then turns away, cautious. 

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About the Author: 

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 2025. Moonlight Elk was recently  recognized as a Finalist in the New Mexico Book Awards in the Nature and Environment category.  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. 

In addition to her writing, Christie Green is also a clothing designer. She launched the christie nell  collection of fabrics and garments, inspired by the animals she hunts and their habitats. Her  collection, christie nell, celebrates the scaled, feathered and hoofed, the animals she has tracked  and traced along ridges, through deep canyons, across valley expanses and along watershed  tributaries. This clothing honors the wildlife whose bodies she has taken into her own as  nourishment, sustenance. The mission of christie nell is to inspire reverence for and stewardship of  the Earth.

Christie Green is also a landscape architect. With a Master of Landscape Architecture from the  University of New Mexico, Christie founded radicle, a design-build firm that combines landscape,  art, ecology, and activism. 

Christie Green resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Kenai, Alaska. 

To learn more, visit https://www.christiegreen.net  

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Category: On Writing