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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• Follow us on Instagram: @womeninwildplaces @outsidegabs
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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

• Instagram: womeninwildplaces

• Host: outsidegabs

• Support the show + join the community on Patreon

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• Substack: https://substack.com/@womeninwildplaces

Kristy and Anna are twin mushers who race sled dogs across Alaska’s most remote wilderness.

Racing sled dogs across Alaska’s vast wilderness is one of the most physically demanding and logistically complex endurance sports in the world. It means weeks of preparation, months of training, and days spent moving through snow, wind, darkness, and isolation alongside a team that cannot speak, but communicates constantly.

In this episode, I sit down with identical twin sisters Kristy and Anna of Seeing Double Sled Dog Racing. Based in rural Alaska, they live and work together caring for, training, and racing with 32 sled dogs. Kristy and Anna share how a childhood fascination with mushing turned into a full-time lifestyle, how they found their way to Alaska, and why sled dog racing is not just a sport, but a long-term commitment to animals, routine, and place.

We talk about what it actually takes to train a sled dog team leading up to hundred-mile days, how race days unfold from the starting line to remote checkpoints, and what it feels like to move through the wilderness when it seems like you might be the only people on earth. Kristy and Anna explain how they communicate with their dogs through body language and instinct, how they make hard decisions in the dogs’ best interest, and why trust is the foundation of everything they do.

We also explore what many people misunderstand about sled dog racing, including why the dogs want to do this work, how they live fully in the present, and what it means to survive together as a team. This episode is about endurance, care, sisterhood, and the intelligence required to move responsibly through wild places.

Follow Kristy and Anna and meet their dogs here:

• Website: https://seeingdoublesleddogracing.com
• Instagram: @seeingdoublesleddogracing
• Facebook: Seeing Double Sled Dog Racing

Follow Women in Wild Places

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