Welcome to The Campfire's Edge, a podcast about the people who live closest to the more-than-human (hunters, foragers, anglers, hikers and birders) and their encounters with the paranormal. Your hosts, Matt Stansberry and Sarah Rose, are passionate conservationists, hunters and parents living in the Piedmont of North Carolina., Matt is an author and Sarah is a wildlife artist. In this first episode the hosts articulate the topics that drive this podcast: What does a person who is viscerally connected to a landscape experience in a paranormal event? Can looking at different peoples' experiences comparatively tell us anything about how the world works? And how can outdoors people process these encounters and bring some value back to their communities and landscapes?

You can find links to some of the books we reference here.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/312960.The_Ecology_of_Freedom

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221824.Defending_the_Earth

In this episode, Sarah and Matt discuss their history with bears and past hunts, and go through the transactional relationship Sarah developed with the first bear she had killed, and the promise we kept to bring him home a bear-wife. Warning: There is swearing in this episode because Matt is scared of bears.

In this episode, Sarah interviews UAP and paranormal researcher Barbara Fisher about her experiences with anomalous lights in the Appalachian Mountains near Athens, Ohio. They discusses the research Barbara is conducting to collect and categorize light phenomena in her forthcoming book with Joshua Cutchin. Check out Barbara's Podcast 6 Degrees of John Keel 6degreesofjohnkeel.com and check out our episode art and notes at TheCampFiresEdge.com.

In this episode, Sarah and Matt interview fishing guide Barrett Christiansen about his experience seeing a pink cryptid busting through the mangroves on the Florida coast with a six-foot long, pink and vertically compressed tail. And Sarah looks into the sea serpents of the southeastern US to find comparable critters like th St. John's River Monster (aka the Borinkus!). Email info@thecampfiresedge.com to share your hunting and fishing experiences and check out www.thecampfiresedge.com for original art and show notes.

In this episode, Matt and Sarah describe their experience with orbs - lights in the sky over the Haw River in North Carolina in the fall of 2023 to researchers Joshua Cutcheon and Barbara Fisher, coauthors of a forthcoming book about anomalous lights. The second part of the episode, Sarah continues her discussion with Barbara from Episode 11 (Orbs, Pondered) about what these orbs might be. Email info@thecampfiresedge.com to share your hunting and fishing experiences and check out www.thecampfiresedge.com for original art and show notes.

In this episode, Matt and Sarah interview Jason Carbajal, snowboarder and angler, about his experience meeting a white-pelt bigfoot on a quiet street in rural Illinois in a summer lightning storm. Email info@thecampfiresedge.com to share your hiking, hunting and fishing paranormal experiences and visit TheCampfiresEdge.com for show art and more information.

In this episode, Sarah and Matt chat with Gordon White, a Tasmanian chaos magician, about the connection of hunting and animism, and his personal experiences with the supernatural in the wild. Gordon's books have been hugely influential in the magical community worldwide, and Matt has been a longtime member of Gordon's RSPM community. You can find all of Gordon's information at Rune Soup. Check out TheCampfiresEdge.com for episode art and extras. This episode's art is a mono-print by Matt featuring a deer-skull wreath we created for our solstice ritual.

Sarah and Matt interview paranormal adventurer and podcast host Timothy Renner from Strange Familiars. Tim is an author of several paranormal books, and co-author of Where the Footprints End with Joshua Cutchin. In this episode we talk about mountain lion encounters, playful entities in the forest, and talk about Tim's outdoors experiences and his perspective on hunters and anglers who've been on his show, which just reached the 500 episode milestone last month. This episode's cougar art is pen and ink by Sarah Rose. If you'd like to see more episodes and original art, check out TheCampfiresEdge.com.

Captain Nate Stansberry has decades of experience guiding flyfishing clients on the Pacific Northwest Coast and the Great Lakes. He caught the bug for offshore fishing off Long Island, home of the legendary Frank Mundus. In this episode, we talk to Capt Nate about his relationship with the sea, and why he thinks she is sentient and plans to kill him.

In this episode, Matt and Sarah outline the series of paranormal experiences that occurred, kicking off opening morning of the 2023 whitetail deer gun season opener in North Carolina.

In this episode Sarah interviews her sister Tessa and they discuss how violence can mark a landscape, and her experience with a ghost that followed her home from a favorite hiking spot in Los Alamos New Mexico.

Joshua Cutchin is the author of seven critically-acclaimed books: 2015's A Trojan Feast: The Food and Drink Offerings of Aliens, Faeries, and Sasquatch (translated into Spanish as Banquete Troyano); 2016's The Brimstone Deceit: An In-Depth Examination of Supernatural Scents, Otherworldly Odors, & Monstrous Miasmas; 2018's Thieves in the Night: A Brief History of Supernatural Child Abductions; and 2020's Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon, Volumes I & II, with Timothy Renner. In 2022, he released his two-part masterwork: Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal.

This episode Chris Daughters of the Caddis Fly Shop joins the show to talk about our 2008 Bigfoot footage from the McKenzie River and our experience on Season 1 of Finding Bigfoot. THen Sarah and Matt reckon with what happens when seemingly sane people are forced to seriously contemplate Bigfoot.

In this episode, fly fishing guide Jimmy Lampros describes a strange encounter with an unexplained light in Western Maryland's remote Savage River forest.

The experience mirrors a passage from Harry Middleton's incredible book about Appalachian brook trout fishing, The Spine of Time:

At once, angling broadens a man's vision while often threatening to blind him. Beauty comes like lightning, spontaneous, brief, brilliant, dangerous, with a light or a motion or a shape that unsettles emotions. For a sharp instant, everything pulses with an electric-blue glow, a cold light, a light that is stark and casts no shadow.

For more episodes and artwork, check out TheCampfiresEdge.com.

In this Episode, nature writer and poet John Lane tells a story of his experience at the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming in the 1990s. The story is incredible, full of high strangeness and aerial entities and the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the New Age movement and Native Traditions. We also discuss how the expectations of academia and the literary community kept this story from being told for thirty years, and the synchronicities that led to John telling it now for the first time on The Campfire's Edge.

I've posted a photo of Yatsa, Santos and John, by photographer Mark Olencki who was on the mountain that night. And John's drawing from his journal on TheCampfire'sEdge.com

In this episode, we interview Andy Ciccone, author, podcaster and native plant advocate. We discuss the impact of invasive species on the native plants and animals, the responsibility we have as custodians of the places we live, and challenging ideas championed by popular counterculture voices claiming invasive species management is pointless and racist or xenophobic. You can find new episode art, links to Andy's projects, and check out our struggle against Autumn Olive at TheCampFiresEdge.com.

Season Two of The Campfire's Edge podcast. Sarah and I review our whitetail deer hunting season and our relationship with the Piedmont forest. You can find bonus material and original episode art at TheCampFiresEdge.com.

In this Episode, we visit Little Tennessee River guides Brent Martin and Angela Faye Martin of Alarka Expeditions in Cowee, North Carolina. Brent is the Director of the William Bartram Trail Conservancy and Angela is a musician. They share stories about supernatural incidents that occured in and around their old house on in the mountainside, and offer some perspective on how this place's layered history weighs on the atmosphere and mindset of the people who live and experience this area. Then we interview Brent and Angela's friend Dallas, who witnessed a light in the sky and experienced four hours of missing time. You can see original art and show notes at TheCampfiresEdge.com and if you're interested in Brent and Angela's work be sure to check out Alarka Expeditions.

Nature writer Lyanda Fern Lynn Haupt joins us to talk about bird synchronicities, the communion of saints, and love for Earthsea, etymology and corvid culture. Lyanda is the author of six incredible books, including most recently, Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit. You can find all of Lyanda's books here. You can find episode art and extras at TheCampfiresEdge.com.

In this episode, our friend Jason describes his experiences growing up in Ohio with fairy phenomenon, ghost trains, UFO dreams and his practice of chaos magic. Be sure to check out TheCampFiresEdge.com for original show art and other episodes.

Dr. Robert Michael Pyle is a naturalist and the author of 28 books, including Chasing Monarchs, Where Bigfoot Walks, Wintergreen, Nature Matrix, Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest, the novel Magdalena Mountain, and four collections of poetry. In this episode, we talk about his 2022 bigfoot sighting, what it's like playing in a band with Nirvana's Krist Novoselic, and his experience as a naturalist and scientist writing about sasquatch. For more episodes and original art, go to TheCampfiresEdge.com.

Sarah and Matt give updates on their projects before diving into a conversation about Sarah's experience operating trail cameras, as a artist and graduate student in Mexican Gray Wolf country. She also expands on her experiences with our trail cameras in North Carolina's Haw River watershed and we talk about our favorite captures. Sarah shares insight from our trail cam experiments and gives tips if you are looking get more wildlife on film. 

You can find Matt's Therianthrope Substack here. 

The Bartram 250 Celebration and art Symposium is here. 

Sarah's Artist page is here. 

Original episode art, show notes and library at TheCampfiresEdge.com.

Outro is a demo song from dad-duo, Matt on guitar and Josh Lane on drums aka. Castle Goat . 

In this episode, Matt and Sarah talk to Conner Habib, novelist and host of the podcast Against Everyone With Conner Habib.

Conner's debut novel, Hawk Mountain (July, 2022 ), pairs instances of human violence, and animal violence throughout the book, inviting comparison. We talk about that, and also discuss whether the natural history emphasis in the book makes this novel "nature writing".

You can find Conner's work at ConnerHabib.com. For episode art and show notes, visit TheCampFiresEdge.com. For Sarah's artwork vist SarahDangerwood.com. And Matt's on Substack at Therianthrope.

In this episode, Sarah and I sit down with Hal Herring, host of the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers Cast and Blast, for a wide-ranging conversation about hunting, conservation, and what it really means to be in relationship with land.

Hal brings decades of experience as an outdoor journalist, conservation advocate, and lifelong hunter, and we move through topics ranging from big-game seasons and public land realities to harder questions: who gets to shape conservation priorities, why conflict is unavoidable (and necessary), and what hunters owe the landscapes that feed and sustain them. Along the way, we talk herbalism, fire ecology, strange experiences in the woods, and the ways knowledge forms when you spend enough time paying attention outside.

Check out Hal here: https://www.halherring.com/ and BHA Cast and Blast here: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/Media/BHA-Podcasts

If you enjoy the work Sarah and I are doing, please consider supporting our publishing project on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheHungryForest

And it helps the show a ton if you give us a rating on your podcast player of choice, or share it on social media.

Go to TheCampfiresEdge.com to check out photos from my 2008 trip to the high desert of Eastern Oregon on a habitat restoration project with one of BHA's founding leaders, Mike Beagle. https://thecampfiresedge.com/

In this episode we are  talking about magical practice and hunting.

Human's earliest magical practices almost certainly arose from attempts to secure hunting success. But today, the overlap between these two archaic practices is very limited. 

In this episode we are talking to Aspen, who is a poet and hunter and magical practitioner living out in the American west and she has a substack called Yarrow and Bone which we encourage folks to check out.

If you are a hunter who has a magical practice that you follow, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach out to us at info@thecampfiresedge.com. 

Aspen's Substack: https://yarrowandbone.substack.com/ 

The Campfire's Edge Site has original artwork and show notes: https://thecampfiresedge.com/

Follow The Hungry Forest Gallery & Press on Patreon for more writing and art projects and support the show: https://www.patreon.com/TheHungryForest

Almost fifteen years ago to the day, our friend Jeremy encountered Bigfoot in a remote part of Ohio's Tar Hollow State forest during deer season. His climbing tree stand is likely still connected to the tree, after he ran out of the woods; it's the only time he's done that, in decades of hunting encounters with other large and potentially dangerous animals. We talk about the landscape that shapes hunters, what real fear in the woods feels like, why credible people stay quiet about encounters, and make plans for all of us to go back and stand in “their living room” again. 

For more episodes, original art and show notes, check out TheCampFiresEdge.com.  You can support the show by giving us a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can find more of our work on Patreon.com/TheHungryForest 

https://thecampfiresedge.com/

https://www.patreon.com/TheHungryForest

Dr. Peggy Smith Epig (environmental historian, longtime ranger, and Goucher professor) joins us to talk about how stories shape land ethics, from St. Hubert and St. Cuthbert to fieldwork in West Virginia where a small chapel’s stag icon sparks a conversation about hunting, stewardship, and community norms.

We trace the hagiography of “holy gamekeepers,” a pilgrim’s encounter with an Iberian wolf on the Camino, and the local work of river care and urban stream monitoring—asking how lived experience (and occasional high strangeness) changes how we act on the ground.

Dr. Epig's Pilgrimage Substack is here: https://peppig.substack.com/

Her nature journal substack is here: https://peggysmitheppig.substack.com/

Her Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Wo_fg9XF0NU8aRq4oq0mw

Find original episode art and more episodes at TheCampfiresEdge.com. And if you would like to support the show and get exclusive publications related to the topics we discuss, check out Patreon.com/TheHungryForest.

Western North Carolina opened a new chapter this year: the first regulated black bear hunts in some of the steepest, coldest, and most tangled country in the state. Sarah and Matt both drew tags for this historic hunt. In this episode, they share stories from the field; two hunts shaped by different challenges.

Matt’s encounter unfolded fast, with close-distance decisions and teeth clacking in the brush. Sarah battled brutal terrain and a sudden mountain cold snap that shut down bear movement and made for dangerous conditions.

After the stories, we sit down with Justin McVey, the district wildlife biologist overseeing the region. Justin walks us through the biology and politics behind the new season, and what’s at stake as populations expand into both wilderness and neighborhoods.

Check out TheCampfiresEdge.com for episode notes, hunt photos and original art.

If you enjoy the work Sarah and I are doing, please consider supporting our publishing project on Patreon.

Also, it helps the show a ton if you give us a rating on your podcast player of choice, or share it on social media.