02/10/2026
Where the Bear Chose to Stand
The first thing she felt was not fear, but recognition.
The bear stood before her like a living mountain—massive, silent, ancient. Its breath moved the air between them, slow and steady, as if the world itself had paused to listen. The sky behind them burned with the colors of fire and dusk, a sky that belonged not to one moment in time but to many layered together.
She reached out her hand.
In her village, they taught that courage was not the absence of fear, but the decision to meet what is sacred without turning away. Her fingers rested against the bear’s fur, warm and coarse, carrying the scent of earth, rain, and seasons long past.
The bear did not move.
Long before this meeting, before footsteps had names and stories were still carried by smoke, the bear had walked beside her people—not as a beast, but as a teacher. It taught them when to rest and when to rise, how to endure long winters, how to carry strength without cruelty. The elders said the bear could see into a person’s shadow and know whether they were ready to walk truthfully.
This bear had been waiting.
She stood with her back straight, feathers braided into her hair, each one placed there by hands that loved her. They whispered blessings when they tied them in, prayers for clarity, for humility, for the strength to listen more than she spoke.
The bear lowered its head slightly, eyes dark and reflective. In them, she saw herself—not as she was, but as she had been before doubt crept in. Before the world taught her to rush. Before she forgot how to be still.
“You are not lost,” the bear seemed to say without words. “You are remembering.”
Around them, the land breathed. The grasses bent softly, and the horizon blurred, as if the earth itself was unsure where one story ended and another began. This was a crossing place—where human and spirit, past and future, grief and healing stood close enough to touch.
She leaned her forehead gently against the bear’s chest.
In that moment, she felt the weight of generations behind her: women who carried water, who buried children, who sang anyway. Men who hunted, who failed, who tried again. All of them flowing through her like a quiet river.
The bear carried its own lineage—claws marked by survival, scars earned by protecting what mattered. It had watched humans forget and return, break and mend, over and over again. It did not judge. It waited.
“When you walk forward,” the bear told her, not in sound but in certainty, “walk slowly. The world is fragile where it pretends to be strong.”
She nodded, though no one was watching.
The sky began to cool, the fire tones softening into deeper blues and purples. Time loosened its grip. This meeting would not last, not in form. It never did.
But something lasting had already happened.
She stepped back, her hand trailing from the bear’s fur, and for the briefest second, she thought she saw herself reflected in its shape—tall, steady, unafraid.
The bear turned and walked into the thinning light, its presence dissolving into the land as if it had never been separate from it.
She remained.
Not empty.
Not alone.
From that day on, whenever the world demanded too much noise, too much speed, she remembered the bear’s stillness. Whenever she doubted her strength, she remembered how gently power can stand.
And sometimes, when the sky burns with impossible colors and the earth feels close enough to speak, she places her hand over her heart and knows—
The bear is still walking with her.
(Author and Artwork by William Murphy)
