CREDIT: hillaryhauserenterprises
Hillary Hauser is Executive Director of Santa Barbara based Heal the Ocean (HTO) a standout organization that works with local, state and federal agencies to clean up pollution in the ocean and creeks caused by issues such as wastewater, leaking oil wells, septic systems, dumping. HTO is a dream come true for ALL of us. She has written numerous articles and books about underwater exploration that appear in National Geographic, Ocean Science, Los Angeles Times and Santa Barbara News-Press where she was music critic and is recipient of the NOGI award from Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences. Her latest book is Dancing on Waves: A True Story of Finding Love & Redemption in the Ocean.
The thirteen chapter paperback immediately draws you into a fascinating world of adventures, sorrows and revelations that occur in exotic places like Tavarua, Komodo Island, Baja and Costa Rica or local hangouts at Santa Barbara’s Miramar Beach and the Channel Islands – her go-to locations since childhood. A tempestuous string of happenings opens with an impending divorce from her husband and ends with a report of normal mammograms, environmental projects and Epilogue that highlights some of HTO’s accomplishments.
Throughout Hauser’s vividly written story, the sea remains her inspirational and regenerative life force and from this analogy we symbiotically relive a cascade of land and water situations that describe treatment for breast cancer, signing divorce papers on Good Friday, losing urchin diver friends to horrific accidents off San Miguel Island and finding ‘gunk’ on the water in Shark’s Cove at Fernald Point which initiated her environmental mission. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself not only reading about but bonding with an assortment of characters that include abalone and urchin divers, classical musicians, surfers, scuba divers, Jean-Michel Cousteau, three schipperkes, doctors, regional water quality control health officers and scientists at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Hauser’s book is much more than a reminiscence about the sea; it also serves as a self-help guide and sounding board for those in all walks of life dealing with earth-shattering issues she has encountered. She openly shares thoughts, self-doubts, joys, emotions and insights with refreshing candor and includes Matthew Arnolds’s poem Self-Dependence as an eloquent example. It’s like, wow, this high profile author is having a bad hair day, a breakthrough and has the courage to tell-all in words we can relate to. Interestingly, Hauser initially submitted the book’s manuscript to Doubleday in 1998, the same year HTO launched and she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
So now Dancing on Waves has been reborn with vibrant book design and cover art by Bellman Design and Peggy Oki – which seems to fit nicely with Hauser’s takeaway comment in the first chapter: “For me, the ocean is the Great Lap that waits with understanding and comfort, the place where I can be who I am, without judgement.”
Dancing on Waves (Hillary Hauser Enterprises, Santa Barbara, 2022) will be released August 5 and is available through retailers or can be ordered on the Heal the Ocean website www.healtheocean.org