This Pisces Full Moon Lunar Eclipse felt less like a single moment in time and more like a conversation unfolding around me.

Perhaps it began long before I arrived in Yosemite.

Three years ago, beneath this same late-August Full Moon, my beloved rabbit companion Astrid transitioned. There are certain dates the heart remembers differently than the calendar does, and this one has remained quietly alive within me ever since.

So returning to the wild beneath this Moon already carried something tender and meaningful.

We went to Yosemite to meet friends for a week of camping, hiking, exploring, and simply disappearing from the usual rhythms of life for a while.

I also arrived with clear intentions for the eclipse and several things close to my heart for which I had been asking for guidance.

Each day became its own little pilgrimage.

We wandered trails into beautiful places, gathering pieces of quartz that called to us along the way. When we reached the alpine lakes waiting at the end of our journeys, we returned the crystals to the water with our intentions.

Earth back to Earth.

A simple exchange of gratitude, prayer, and possibility as the Full Moon approached.

And other things began finding their way to us, too.

A handful of grounding obsidian. Beautiful stones that seemed impossible not to notice, including one shaped like a nearly perfect pyramid and another carrying three distinct pyramids that astonishingly mirrored the three Great Pyramids of Giza.

Feathers appeared at meaningful moments, including a Great Horned Owl tail feather on our very first day.

The night before the eclipse was anything but quiet.

Coyotes howled and yipped through the darkness around us, their voices weaving through the forest for hours and continuing remarkably into the wee hours of morning.

Then that morning before the Full Moon Eclipse, we were sitting beside the campfire when KC – aka Bean – suddenly pointed.

“Bear.”

A large black bear was sauntering directly toward us.

There was no urgency in her. No apparent concern. She seemed completely at ease, as though wandering over to join our morning gathering was the most natural thing in the world.

Of course, we made noise to discourage her from coming closer. Loving wild animals also means respecting the boundaries that help keep them wild and safe.

But something about her presence stayed with me.

Bears are so often interpreted through the language of strength, courage, protection, power, introspection, or hibernation.

Yet that wasn’t what I felt.

What struck me was her complete lack of performance.

She wasn’t trying to embody power.

She simply was powerful.

There was an extraordinary peace in that.

A confidence without assertion. A strength without tension. A presence that didn’t seem to require anything outside itself for confirmation.

Embodied peace.

Perhaps one of the deepest expressions of power is not needing to demonstrate that we possess it.

Many deer appeared along the hike that followed, adding their own gentle presence to a morning that already felt touched by something larger. The renewing presence of deer continued to grace us each day, in fact.

Then, on the morning of the Full Moon, after I had specifically asked again for signs and guidance, another Great Horned Owl feather appeared alongside a beautiful piece of obsidian in a place I never would have expected to find it.

I didn’t need to decide immediately what any of it meant.

The simple fact that I had asked and then encountered these things directly after was enough.

And then the weather began changing our plans.

Large storms were moving toward Yosemite, and after our hike that morning, we abruptly decided to pack everything and leave rather than remain for the days of heavy weather ahead.

We finished loading the car just as the rain began.

Three-plus hours later, we arrived home in time for the sky to erupt into one of the most spectacular sunsets—a fiery, passionate blaze stretching across the horizon that uncannily mirrored a nearly exact sunset that lit up the sky the night before leaving for Yosemite.

Just before reaching fullness, the Moon had risen with such brilliance that she seemed almost like the Sun, illuminating the night sky and softening even the stars within her radiance.

Yet on the night of her fullness and eclipse, she appeared differently.

That night, I stayed awake and continued getting up to meet the Moon.

She glowed behind a mysterious moving curtain of clouds, appearing and disappearing throughout the night.

There was something strangely perfect about the contrast. At one moment, illumination so brilliant it transformed the darkness around her. At another, the same light partially veiled.

I had entered this eclipse asking for clarity, messages, and guidance. Yet the Moon herself seemed unwilling to reveal everything at once.

Her light was unmistakably there.

But clarity remained partially veiled.

And perhaps that was part of the answer.

Some knowing doesn’t arrive as immediate revelation. Sometimes we are asked to feel what has shifted before we understand what it means—to allow the heart to hold something the mind cannot yet name.

The following day brought rain at home as well, but we were still able to continue our time with our friends. Rather than planning anything ambitious, we chose an easy walk before lunch and errands.

That seemingly ordinary choice became anything but ordinary.

Up ahead, I spotted a mama bear.

And then her two cubs.

We stopped at a respectful distance and watched as the little ones ran, played, wrestled, and scrambled up trees while their mother remained nearby.

She was watchful and protective, yet what moved me most was the joy unfolding around her.

Watching them shifted something in the usual symbolism of protection for me.

Protection is so often imagined as guarding against danger. Building walls. Keeping something precious from harm.

But perhaps there is another form of protection.

We protect joy by helping create the conditions in which joy can exist.

We protect love by giving it room to express itself.

We protect what matters not only by defending it, but by nourishing the environment in which it can flourish.

Mama Bear wasn’t preventing her cubs from exploring because something might happen to them.

She was present enough for them to play.

Her strength created room for their freedom.

And suddenly the bears seemed to be speaking to one another across these encounters.

The first bear had embodied a power so completely at home within itself that it needed no performance.

The mother bear embodied a power secure enough to become spaciousness for joy.

Presence and creation.
Peace and play.
Power without force.
Protection without constriction.

But apparently the conversation wasn’t finished.

After watching the mother and cubs for a long while, we finally continued back. Along the way, KC suddenly spotted another large solitary bear among the trees before it disappeared into the forest.

Four bears that day.

We could hardly believe it.

Later, we returned home, settled into the coziness of the rain, and played cards together.

Then Clint – aka Happy – noticed something just outside.

Another large resident bear we’ve seen before was making his way across the street and into a neighboring backyard.

Five bears in one day.

Six surrounding the eclipse.

The following day carried us onto new trails we had never explored together, chasing waterfalls and climbing to great heights to reach them. There was something beautifully fitting about continuing into the unknown this way, discovering what waited beyond each rise rather than needing to know beforehand.

And still, the bears remained with me.

For us, seeing even one bear is an extraordinary gift. Six arriving within such a concentrated threshold felt impossible to ignore – a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And perhaps I don’t need to decide exactly what it means.

That itself feels connected to what this eclipse has been showing me.

We had gathered together at the peak of the eclipse and placed our intentions consciously into this threshold. I had asked for messages around things deeply important in my own life.

And messages came.

Just not as neatly packaged answers.

They came as coyotes calling through darkness.

Quartz gathered along the trails and returned to mountain lakes.

A handful of grounding obsidian appearing along the way.

A piece of obsidian naturally shaped by the Earth into a form that mirrored an ancient arrowhead.

Beautiful stones, including a nearly perfect pyramid and another carrying three pyramids mirroring the Great Pyramids of Giza.

Feathers appearing at meaningful moments.

A Great Horned Owl feather and an unexpected piece of obsidian arriving together on the Full Moon morning after I had asked for signs.

A bear walking peacefully toward a morning fire.

Pairs and triads of deer moving through the forest.

Tiny tree frogs somehow at home within the vastness of the world more than 10,600 feet above it.

Storms changing our plans.

Bookended and mirroring, fiery passionate sunsets seeing us off and waiting at home.

Rainbow winged clouds greeting us upon entry into Yosemite’s epic vastness.

A Moon repeatedly disappearing behind clouds.

A mother bear creating enough safety for her children to play.

Bears appearing again and again.

And dreams.

So many dreams.

Each night while camping and again after returning home, I remembered vivid dreams filled with remarkable threads of telepathy, communication, and messages that felt intimately connected to what has been moving through my waking life.

Something has shifted.

I can feel it even without being able to explain where it is leading.

And woven quietly through everything is Astrid.

Three years after she left her physical body beneath this late-August Full Moon, I found myself beneath it again surrounded by wild beings, mysterious communication, thresholds, endings, beginnings, and a love that has never depended upon physical presence to remain alive.

I can’t say where she ends and synchronicity begins.

I’m not sure I need to.

Perhaps love has its own language for continuing.

The eclipse has passed, but its unfolding has not.

I have no idea what may manifest next.

Nor do I know what the coming weeks and months will bring.

But something about these bears has changed the way I am holding that unknown.

The first didn’t ask permission to inhabit his presence.

The mother didn’t protect joy by containing it. She created enough safety for it to run wild.

And none of them seemed concerned with becoming anything other than completely what they were.

Perhaps this is the bear medicine I needed.

Not simply strength.

Not retreat.

Not protection as we usually understand it.

But the quiet power of being so deeply rooted within ourselves that we can create from peace rather than fear.

To become protectors of joy by becoming creators of it.

To trust what we know without forcing what we cannot yet see.

And to inhabit our own lives so completely that we no longer need to chase what is meant to meet us.

I asked this eclipse for guidance.

It didn’t give me a map.

It gave me six bears.

For now, that feels like more than enough.