Bookworks welcomes Christie Green for a reading and signing of her new book, Moonlight Elk
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.
Outside the grip of the human realm, the moon beckoned to Green to go beyond. Here, hunting in the wild, the moon cycled through her, rising and falling at dawn and dusk, whispering messages from the dark side. Green began to attune to the more elusive, mysterious murmuration of the moon.
Animals and dreams, lunar partners, choreographed Green through time and space. She longed to dream, toil, live and love at the edges of the fertile ecotones where she could withdraw inward, retreat like an animal into hiding, and then come into full, radiant view on her own terms.
In Moonlight Elk: One Woman’s Hunt for Food and Freedom, Christie 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 witnessed the animals defying reason as they walked her into their world, ambling her along, straddling night and day, waking and sleeping. In the process, Green eclipsed 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.
Bookworks
This fall, Bookworks celebrates 39 years as a locally-owned and operated independent bookstore, a literary meeting place in Albuquerque since 1984, from its original home in Albuquerque’s Rio Grande Valley in what was then the Dietz Farm Plaza, and now in the next stage of life, next to the Flying Star Cafe in the Shops on Rio Grande. The store is well-known for hosting high-quality events and readings, including local, regional, and nationally-known authors.