GSP #83: Callie Russell on tending ecosystems with goats

Kelly Moody

Jun 18, 2024

Transcript

Episode #83 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Callie Russell, an interview recorded in the field on a goat walk in New Mexico this past March.

You may know Callie from the Alone show, though I have never watched it. We have known each other for many years and this past Spring we camped together for a few weeks by a river, with friends and her goats. We took time to record a conversation together for the podcast. The episode starts with us at camp with Rain, an old friend, and our banter getting ready to leave for a walk. If you want to skip that part you can fast forward 10 minutes or so past the field recording beginning. It’s funny though- to get a glimpse into life at camp. Most of the convo is of us walking with the goats and talking while on a walk. We eventually sit down to finish the interview. On our way back, one of the goats pushes me off a cliff and abruptly stops the recording, and you hear the incident in the episode. Thankfully I catch a root and Callie grabs me and all is ok. What we do for podcast recordings..

It’s been a second since I’ve had a chance to put a new episode out. Thanks for your patience as I navigate making time for the podcast with other obligations and life movements. This podcast doesn’t make me money, but costs money to keep going and to keep old episodes alive. Sponsorships and financial contributions are super helpful! Thanks to folks who have supported the podcast over the years.

In this episode with Callie, we talk about:

Why do goats play the way they do?
How having goats around can be soothing and give a bigger sense of purpose
What can we learn about the instincts of goats wanting to stick together
the purpose of goats having horns to their health and social structure, safety
walking with goats everyday gives different lenses of tuning into the land
callie’s upbringing in Phoenix, AZ
putting academic theory into practice
how folks judge callie’s lifeway and how being on a TV show changes people’s opinions because is a consumerist medium that somehow gives credibility in mainstream society
Alone as a consumer supported vision quest
her years working in wilderness therapy and how it influenced her to fully step out of living in the wild for awhile
callie’s motivations for learning ancestral skills - being connected to what we eat
goats are a bridge for reconnection to living out on wild landscapes and learning what it meant for our ancestors
callie learned she could ‘survive’ in the wild though it meant leaving her family behind who didn’t live the way she did
how callie used to have a hard time integrating back in modern society after being out for long periods, and how it has gotten easier over time
how spending time out on wild land in the elements and the variability of weather can slowly create adaptability and resilience
callie explains the responsibility of folks going further out into remote places with animals like goats and how we have to do it responsibly and with the collective in mind because our actions affect everyone
how callie strategically protects sensitive plants when she is out in wild areas with her goats using sheets and other barriers, and how being a human moving with a herd allows us to be intuitively interconnected to their affect on landscapes. remember the episode with Ethan Bonnin? This is in the vein of what we talked about in that episode.
how goats choose the plants they need at any given moment when they are out in the ecosystem and not just getting fed hay behind a fence

Become a paid subscriber to Ground Shots extras on Substack to hear an extra story from Callie not included in the main interview. She tells a story of saving a goat from a mountain lion when she lived in the wilderness years ago. Its quite a story!