A Field Guide to Now: Notes on Mindfulness and Life in the Present Tense

A Field Guide To Now is a reference manual for creating an extraordinary life out of ordinary moments. This collection of illustrated essays and field notes explores the tenuous line between survival and thriving; between wanderlust and making a home; between being and becoming; and about how these things inevitably converge in the scarce, haphazard, simple moments of right now. It is both an invitation to create whatever opportunity your heart yearns for, and proof that it is possible. Reinvent the way you engage with the moment and explore the texture of your present tense.

Imagine if you could look for the present moment in a field guide, the way you might look up the name of a tree you see outside your window?

For as long as you can remember, the tree has just been a tree. But when you look it up, it becomes something more—a sassafras maybe, or a tulip maple—and suddenly you can feel the way your attention toward it shifts. You recognize the way its pollen gathers fine and yellow in the weft of your bedroom screen in May, or the way its shade freckles the dying grass at the end of summer. In the act of naming it, in discovering its traits and marks, the tree becomes something more to you.

What if you could do this for all the moments that fill your life? That is what this book is about. Begin. Take note. Be right here.

“An ode to the pleasures and sweet bondage of motherhood, a gift basket of drawings, musings, definitions and advice from the grassy hillside of a New England farmhouse.  A labor of love, in loves coat of many colors; an offering to the God of the search for a valuable life.”

- Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted and Cowboys Are My Weakness

“Christina Rosalies thoughtful book, A Field Guide to Now, is a personal and conversational guide to faith and timing.”  

- Sabrina Ward Harrison, author of Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself

“In A Field Guide to Now Christina Rosalie brings life into perfectly crisp focus by distilling it, with letters and paint, down to its most basic and beautiful elements. While falling in love with her world, youll remember what you love about your own life, and youll finish the book inspired to make the most of every moment.”

- Katherine Malmo, author of Who in This Room: The Realities of Cancer, Fish, and Demolition.

“No one talks about the moments in between,” and yet Christina Rosalie does. Reminiscent of Annie Dillard, Rosalie shows us how the unexpected details of daily life - a weasel destroying the hen house, a praying mantis climbing the pepper mill - allow us to understand that “the present tense is at once much bigger and messier and also smaller and more precise” than we can imagine. Interrupted sleep, fledgling dreams, clambering children, and several cups of coffee later, we learn, as she has, that, “Its easy to look at whats achievable in a day and come up short. But its just as easy to underestimate what you can accomplish in a year.” Beautifully written and illustrated, A Field Guide to Now is just that, a guide to living in the present - one I plan to carry with me and return to often.

- Laisha Rosnau, poet and author of Lousy Explorers, Notes on Leaving, and The Sudden Weight of Snow

Every self-help book tells us to "be present," but few succeed in showing us how. With this beautiful book, author and artist Christina Rosalie leads readers to discover how the small and seemingly mundane aspects of daily life can--through a shift in focus--become a springboard for the profound. Part adventure guide and part survival guide, A Field Guide To Now is filled with thought starters and creative exercises that will lead you to uncover your own extraordinary life amidst the ordinary moments of every day.

For as long as you can remember, the tree has just been a tree, but when you look it up, it becomes something more: a sassafras maybe, or a tulip maple, and suddenly you can feel the way your attention toward it shifts. You recognize the way its pollen gathers fine and yellow in the weft of your bedroom screen in May, or the way its shade freckles the dying grass at the end of summer. In the act of naming it, in discovering its traits and marks, the tree becomes something more to you.

What if you could do this for all the moments that fill your life? That is what this book is about.

For anyone who craves a meaningful life, A Field Guide To Now is an invitation to begin. Through evocative prose and original illustrations, Christina Rosalie inspires readers to find passion and purpose by attending to the moment at hand.

Every self-help book tells us to “be present,” but few succeed in showing us how. With this book, Christina leads readers to discover how the small and seemingly mundane aspects of daily life can—through a shift in focus—become a springboard for the profound. It is an antidote to the perpetual rush we experience daily; and to that feeling that there will never be enough time to begin, to commit to a creative practice, or to become whatever it is we want most to be.

Part adventure guide and part survival guide, A Field Guide To Now is filled with thought starters and creative exercises that will lead you to uncover your own extraordinary life amidst the ordinary moments of every day. It will make you laugh. It will make your heart sing. It will give you a reason to pause. Above all else, this book is call to take action, to live wholly into the present, and to persist in becoming whatever your heart yearns to be. 

Christina Rosalie is a writer, mixed-media artist, and creative consultant whose award winning work and been featured in print and online. Her blog, My Topography, a Best of Blogs “Best Creative Blog” winner, has a loyal and expanding audience. Visit her at mytopography.com.