Field Guide to Now Quotes

“From here our house looks small and perched, like a storybook cottage up on the hill, white, and gabled, and distant; and for a moment I am astounded by the way our legs have carried us all the way here, where the tracks of voles and field mice make fidgety paths across the snow between tall patches of grass, and the fat blue shadow of a solitary wooden fence post marks the path of the noontime sun above us.”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense

“We hear them often in the night. Their wild yelping makes the hair on my neck rise, even as I am always compelled to go to the nearest window and fling it open to listen, despite the cold. You can hear them moving: nearer, nearer up the frozen creek bed, until they are just beyond the edge of the porch light, the moon a grinning wedge above the trees. And then they’re gone, racing up the valley into the dark. I can feel how they’re close now, beyond the meadow’s edge, somewhere in the woods there, maybe asleep or watching us with yellow eyes, alerted by our footsteps and the sharp, ringing singsong of my son’s eager voice. This is always the case: The line between us and the wild is slender, like the bit of thread I find coiled in my pocket. My fingers tease it, wanting to know how it’s wound. This is always the way. I always want to know. The thread is yellow and snarled and comes from the windowsill of the bedroom above the garage. I stuck it in my pocket this morning while tidying, meaning to throw it away. It was from tha same window that I saw the foxes last week. The ruckus of the chickens alerted me, and when I looked down, one was right below me in the snowy driveway, looking up. I pounded my fist on the glass and began to yell, but it didn’t run. Instead it just stared at me, not moving a muscle until I ran down and out into the snow without a hat or gloves or jacket, boots unlaced, shrieking like a madwoman. Of course it ran then, though not far at first—just to the top of the nearest field—and when I followed after, another joined it. They’d staked the chicken house out for sure. And even though they were a threat to our unwitting hens, I was sad when they disappeared among the white trunks of a stand of birches, and I can still feel the way my heart was hammering hard and raw in my chest after running through the snow, hair flyaway, clapping my hands. Their fur was rust-colored, and when they ran”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense

“Together we look toward the woods below us, toward a place we’ve never gone, on property that is not ours. It looks abrupt and dark against the snow, with a row of pointed pines just visible over the slope of the field, and when I glance down at my feet I can see now that we’ve been standing on coyote tracks. They must come up from the woods, crossing this field at dusk, tongues lolling, breath rising in frothy clouds from their mouths.”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense

“The field is wide, and the snow deep, grass poking through it brown and folded, like the limbs of long-legged birds. Liam dashes ahead, then stops abruptly and squats down to look at something in the snow. My shadow overtakes him. I hold my breath as I come up beside him, watching as his breath lifts like a cloud in the cold air above his head.”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense

“I bring my camera, hoping for something unfamiliar, though I know nearly every rut and mailbox and tree by heart after three years of living in this place. But today it’s easier than I expect: Liam darts off into the uncharted landscape of a neighbor’s field and I follow after.”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense

“There are a hundred things on my to-do list, and not one of them is taking a walk with my eldest son. Yet right now it is the only thing that I can do. He’s been dogging me for the past half-hour, his questions becoming increasingly persistent. “Mama, do you have Post-it notes? Mama, do you know about thunder sharks? Mama, look! Mama! Mama?” There is something about the resistance of the moment. There comes a point when persisting in whatever I am doing results in an inevitably bad outcome, a meltdown, jelly legs, little hands curled”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense

“Each chapter has the following elements: Essay: Containing the intimate, raw, and immediate stories that examine the fabric of the present tense.”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense

“This is what I know: Remarkable things emerge from the smallest, most ordinary circumstances—from taking note and then taking action.”
― Christina Rosalie, Field Guide to Now: Notes On Mindfulness And Life In The Present Tense