Jarod K. Anderson > Quotes

“It’s easy to look at the contours of a forest and feel a bone deep love for nature. It’s less easy to remember that the contours of your own body represent the exact same nature. The pathways of your mind. Your dreams, dark and strange as sprouts curling beneath a flat rock. Your regret, bitter as the citrus rot of old cut grass. It’s the same as the nature you make time to love. That you practice loving. The forest. The meadow. The sweeping arm of a galaxy. You are as natural as any postcard landscape and deserve the same love.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“There's an endless autumn in me,
scenting my thoughts like campfire smoke.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“You won't see most of this planet.
Under each rock.
Beneath the water.
Secrets of air and soil.

Can you feel the joy behind this limitation?
That there is always a new thing to discover,
a new way to grow,
is one of the sweetest parts of living,

and it's free and inexhaustable.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“The choice to focus on the good is itself
a way to defy the evil.”
― Jarod K. Anderson

“I couldn’t deny that the world that made the heron made me too, that we were of the same time and context, and somehow, in that moment, it didn’t feel possible that I was made to be miserable and afraid, to be measured by bank statements or resumes, not when there were living poems, descended from dinosaurs, walking beneath the silent trees just as they had long before the first written language.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“Technically speaking, you can look at any human life as the sum of a complex collection of chemical reactions, in much the same way as you can look at any beautiful painting as a simple collection of pigments, which is to say, you can miss the point of anything.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“You can look at any human life as the sum of a complex collection of chemical reactions,
in much the same way as you can look at any beautiful painting as a simple collection of pigments,
Which is to say, you can miss the point of anything.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“When we die, they may bury us or collect our ashes, but remember this: from baby teeth to skin cells and everything in between, most of the matter that has worn your name is already spread throughout the world. We bury our remains in the soil of our lifetimes.

Can you feel it? So many of the cells that have formed the community of your body have returned to nature. Most of the water that has fueled your life has returned to the sea. The substance of your form is not fixed. It flows like a river to and from the wilderness.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“If you whisper a secret to a candle flame, then all fire everywhere will know that secret. The words will crackle in every campfire and churn like an ocean deep in the bell of the Earth. Fire will translate your words to smoke and ash, telling no one but the sky.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“In the end, you were a part of the sky on loan to a body. A part of the sea that awoke to thought. A part of the Earth who carried a name.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“Fifty thousand years ago, an elk was struck by lightning and lived. The ache of it stayed in her bones the rest of her life. There was no human there to see it or record it in words, yet it’s just as much a part of earth’s essential history as any song lingering in a billion human minds. So why should we think of language as the lifeblood of knowledge or the currency of legitimate existence?”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“There are two paths to magic: Imagination and paying attention. Imagination is the fiction we love, the truths built of falsehoods, glowing dust on the water’s surface. Paying attention is about intentional noticing, participating in making meaning to lend new weight to our world. An acorn. The geometry of a beehive. The complexity of whale song. The perfect slowness of a heron.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“SIT WITH ME
I’m not trying to write a tailored suit.
I’m trying to write boot socks, warm from the dryer.
There’s an endless autumn in me,
scenting my thoughts like campfire smoke.
I write for the weather I know.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“Now, however, on hard days, I can look at death kindly and not feel it as a beckoning force, but a gentle, distant rain sweeping toward me from the west, a rain I will find soaking the parched earth at my feet one day. One day. And I can think of that inevitable day without frantically trampling through the fields of flowers ahead of me while rushing to meet those curtains of falling water.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“I hope there is life elsewhere in the universe.
I don't care about aliens and advanced technology.
I just want there to be one planet that is all moss.
A perfect sphere of soft, green carpet.
I hope it exists and that no human foot ever dents its perfect, plush surface.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Love Notes From The Hollow Tree

“Lives aren’t completed.
They’re concluded.
You are, and forever will be, unfinished.
This is nature.
Cycles and spectrums.
Moments and seasons.
Do you ask when the weather will be complete? The spring finished?
Your life won’t have one point or purpose.
You’re lovelier than that.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Love Notes From The Hollow Tree

“The Truth About Owls

You flinch at leaf shadows
tumbling across your driveway
and the shadows notice you flinching.

The thought gets under their skin,
starts them asking questions to your back
as you walk away.

"Are we something to fear?"

Two nights later,
the shadows pile into three dimensions,
hop twice, and fly off on soundless wings.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“Weigh a leaf in your palm.
Imperceptible.
A green whisper.
A cool nothing.
Weigh it again in your lungs,
with the iron in your blood.
Feel your genes clinging to those soft green cells like ivy on an oak.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“Bats can hear shapes. Plants can eat light. Bees can dance maps. We can hold all these ideas at once and feel both heavy and weightless with the absurd beauty of it all. These are some facts that are easy to overlook.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“These practical and cultural challenges are further complicated if the illness is too invisible or too conspicuous. Further still if it makes others uncomfortable or if it requires specialized equipment or rare expertise. The complications increase exponentially for those who do not have the emotional and financial support systems that I enjoy, those, for example, who navigate the labyrinthian regulations of federal disability programs, where funding can be stripped away for such missteps as finding someone you wish to marry or saving too much money. Our legal policies surrounding disability funding carry a clear message. If you need your civilization’s help to stay afloat while disabled, you must be careful to live in the abject poverty society feels you deserve or the help you need will be withheld. Such is our cultural love of billable productivity and our general disdain for everything else. It’s a concept that many of us internalize without a second thought. Our worth is our productivity.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“Somewhere, there are orcas. Somewhere, there is a living bristlecone pine that stood when the pyramids were built at Giza. Somewhere, an unnamed creature swims in dark waters and has never witnessed an electric light. This is where we live. This is our world.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“You are nature and nature will go on,
but there is kindness that only you can choose to bring to the world.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“Woodland You It’s easy to look at the contours of a forest and feel a bone deep love for nature. It’s less easy to remember that the contours of your own body represent the exact same nature. The pathways of your mind. Your dreams, dark and strange as sprouts curling beneath a flat rock. Your regret, bitter as the citrus rot of old cut grass. It’s the same as the nature you make time to love. That you practice loving. The forest. The meadow. The sweeping arm of a galaxy. You are as natural as any postcard landscape and deserve the same love.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“We all consume so many purposefully crafted stories that it's easy to forget life doesn't follow conventional narrative structure. We can't wait for our climax. We don't have character arcs. We live and then we don't. There is no final culmination in success or failure. We are not curated collections of achievements or mishaps.

It is not inherently wrong that we understand the world through stories. It's who we are. It is wrong not to treat our stories as living documents, as ongoing conversations. We know that our stories tend toward dichotomous patterns of black and white, so it's those structures that we need to scrutinize most actively.

This isn't easy advice to take I still struggle with it. Stories are like gravity. It's hard to examine something you've felt your entire life.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“You may feel separated from the natural world, but just look at what you are. Look at how you live. You are not born to this place. You are born of this place.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“One of the most vital things for you to build and nurture is your own inner landscape. It is hard to bring peace to others when you do not grant it to yourself.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“ECONOMICS
We borrow our atoms.
The universe owns them.
The universe borrows our love and wonder.
Those belong to us.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“We are worthy parts of an amazing world. We have meaningful choices to make. Our limitations do not negate our worth or right to happiness. Your job isn’t to move the boulder, just to push when you are able. Cultivate love for what is and hope for what could be, all while sparing a bit of awe and gratitude for the massive, unknowable, unlikely forces that culminated with your own singular presence on this planet.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You

“See a bird and dismiss it.
See a bird and learn its species.
See a bird and study its behavior.
See a bird and question the physics of flight.
See a bird and trace its DNA back to the dinosaurs.
Life can pass over us unnoticed or be rich in poetry.
Curiosity is worth the effort.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Love Notes From The Hollow Tree

“To feel deeply is dangerous. To do anything else is a tragedy.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Something in the Woods Loves You