films / HELLO WINTER / COMMUNITY VIGNETTE

amanda monthei

images and questions by liam gallagher

Q : And what's your work life look like these days?

A : I am a freelance science communicator who is particularly interested in improving societal fluency around wildfires and building resilience to wildfire. Almost everything I do professionally now centers on my goal to help people better understand the benefits of fire and the nuances around the wildfire conversation right now, which I first started considering when I worked in fire from 2016-2019. I also still get to go in the field occasionally as a prescribed fire practitioner and information officer on wildfires, which is always a needed break from my desk. It’s definitely been difficult to move from working a lot of manual labor jobs (firefighting, patrolling, being a liftie) to being a full-on desk person as of lately. Very grateful that the flexibility of freelance work still allows me to get out on most pow days, though.

Q : What do you love most about Mt. Baker Ski Area?

A : What I’ve come to love about Mt. Baker is how my relationship to it has changed so much through the years. I remember showing up for my first winter out here (2017-18) and being kind of scared shitless. I had grown up skiing in Northern Michigan (shout out to Nubs Nob) and had skied a little bit out West, but hadn’t experienced anything like the culture and terrain at Baker. And I got swept up into this community of people who absolutely ripped, and I could not keep up. I definitely cried at the top of Hairy Scary once. But I particularly remember admiring how hard some of those first women I met charged, making skiing/riding in this terrain and maritime snow look so effortless. And then eventually I found myself skiing that terrain confidently after years and years of following these people around, and while I still have a lot to learn and a lot of nooks and crannies to explore, it’s been an honor to get to know a place like Baker, where you can roll up to the lift solo and seemingly always run into someone to take a lap with or just share a chairlift with. It’s a really special place.

Q : Tell us about the Life with Fire podcast?

A : I make Life with Fire (https://lifewithfirepodcast.com/) so anyone can glean something from the episodes—whether you’re a landowner or a student or a practitioner or a policy expert or none of those things. I love to get into some heady topics with people who have insane resumes; I’ve spoken with multiple people at NASA, countless professors, the director of a major state land management agency, a lawyer at Stanford…it goes on. And I balance that out with lots of interviews with the folks doing the work on the ground, including from demographics that aren’t represented in the greater media space around fire, but who exist in this space nonetheless: for a few examples, I did a series last spring on trans women in fire, have spoken to a formerly incarcerated firefighter, and have spoken to a number of Indigenous fire practitioners whose perspectives on stewardship are critical right now. I always try to make the episodes as accessible as possible, and the hope is that you’ll walk away having learned something new about wildfire and the folks trying to build resilience to it.

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