Last Thursday, at 10:30 in the morning, I came face-to-face with a bear. An actual bear. Mature, enormous, and ten feet away, with a nose I will be thinking about for the rest of my life.

Let me back up.

What the ducks knew before I did

I was out walking the property with my three ducks, who are almost two years old now. They’ve grown up. They know the boundaries of our two and a half acres even without a fence. They’re no longer the toddlers I used to chase out of places they shouldn’t be. So we were just hanging out by the compost pile in the wooded part of the land. They were foraging for worms. I was listening to a podcast and watching them.

And then, all at once, they stood straight up. Those long bottle-necks stretched to full height. Frozen. Every one of them, still as statues, staring at something I couldn’t see.

I didn’t know what it was. But I knew enough to trust it.

So I turned and started leading them out of the woods, back toward the open garden. And as I rounded the corner, there he was.

The pause

Ten feet. Maybe less.

We were both surprised. I think he was as startled as I was. And then we just… stopped. Both of us. I didn’t move. He didn’t move. The ducks hadn’t caught up to my lead yet, so for a moment it was just me and this enormous animal, looking into each other’s eyes.

There was no aggression or fear. And no direction. Just two beings, recognizing each other across a very small distance.

It felt like minutes. It was probably thirty seconds.

I didn’t run. I didn’t perform. I didn’t do anything except stay. Some older, deeper part of me knew that the worst thing I could do was bolt, so I just stood in the pause and let it be what it was.

Then the ducks quacked, waddled out in front of me, and the bear made a sudden U-turn, exit, stage left. I backed up, found my girls, and walked quickly the other way.

Here’s what I’ve been feeling since

Three things.

The first is that my body knew before my mind did. Or rather, the ducks’ bodies knew, and I was smart enough to trust them. Their necks went up a full minute before I understood why. And the part of me that decided to turn and lead them out wasn’t the thinking part. It was something deeper that doesn’t wait for an explanation.

The second is that what saved me wasn’t action, but stillness. Not running. The staying present with something enormous instead of reacting to it. There’s a kind of power in the pause that we forget about, in a world that rewards the quick move, the fast answer, the immediate reaction. So often, the wisest thing you can do is hold still and let the moment resolve itself.

And the third is that the creatures I went out there to protect were the ones who protected me. I walk with the ducks along partly as a guard, and partly because I love them. But it was their quacking and sudden waddle that broke the spell and sent the bear on his way. The care I give circles back. The ones I tend turned out to be the ones standing between the bear and me.

Why this matters this week

This week, the energy turns. We move out of the heady, fast, mental season and into something deeper and more instinctive. From the head to the gut. From thinking to feeling. From explaining to knowing.

It’s a week to trust the thing in you that knows before you can prove it. The neck that goes up. The freeze. The quiet “turn around now” that arrives without a reason attached.

We’re so trained to override that and wait for evidence. To talk ourselves out of the knowing because we can’t yet justify it. But the ducks didn’t need a reason. They just knew. And because I trusted them, I rounded that corner already moving, instead of standing frozen at the compost pile when the bear arrived.

The belief that won’t survive this week

“I can’t act until I understand why.”

You can. And sometimes you must.

There’s a knowing that lives under your thoughts that’s older than language and faster than logic. You feel it in your body before your mind catches up. It’s the hair on your arms, the pull to leave a room, and the sudden stillness when something isn’t right.

That’s a form of intelligence we’ve been taught to distrust because it doesn’t come with a footnote.

But this week, listen to it. You don’t need to understand why your neck went up. You just need to trust that they did, and move accordingly.

One more thing

I keep thinking about the bear’s eyes. That long moment where neither of us knew what would happen, and nothing did. We just saw each other.

I wasn’t his enemy. He wasn’t mine. We were just two creatures who’d surprised each other in the woods, working out, in real time, without words, that there was no fight here. Only recognition and an agreement to go our separate ways.

I think about how much of life would soften if we could do more of that. Less reacting. More seeing. The willingness to hold still in front of something we don’t understand, and trust that not every encounter needs to become a battle.

The bear went his way. We went ours. The ducks were very pleased with themselves.

And I came back inside more awake than I’ve felt in months.

Jonni

P.S. Next week, everything shifts at once with a Full Moon, a long inward turn, and the start of some deep family and ancestral work. I’ll walk you through it. For now, trust your neck.

P.P.S. The ducks have not stopped talking about it. And neither have I.