Doug Hiser

“One day I saw the big jaguar,Calypso, jump up from the sand and run quickly, snarling, into the jungle. I looked around and the monkeys were jumping and screeching in the trees. Gazing across the water I saw something moving out there, getting closer. It was a canoe with three men paddling towards my shore. I started to smile and then I worried that they might want to kill me. I ran to my house and brought out my bow and arrows. I stood there on the beach, with my feet shoulder-width apart, and prepared for their arrival.”

“Sassy had worked in El Paso, Texas as a waitress in a small café, a toll-booth cashier in Houston, Texas, posed nude for magazine photos in Reno, Nevada and even was a ski instructor in Granby, Colorado for a few years. Sassy was always looking. She was looking for something that she couldn’t find. Sassy wanted to go where the road led. She walked past other people’s dreams and security and followed the twisting snake through deserts and mountains, big cities and cow towns. Sassy was on a quest and she didn’t even know it. She would take her small earnings and saddle-up, following fate or hope or desire into new horizons with new promises--a skinny green-eyed girl carrying a backpack full of her life, down the roads of America.”

“. I wanted to hug her, to hold her and tell her that I would have killed him if he ever hurt her. I wanted to shout at her and tell her I would protect her and help her and always be there for her. In that moment I think I fell in love for the first time. I walked over to her not really comprehending what I was feeling but reaching out to her with compassion. I sat down beside Rae and put my arm around her. She hugged me back and whispered, "Thank you." She stood up and touched my cheek with her fingers and went inside her house. I sat there awhile until the porch-light went off and then walked home, my feet about an inch above the ground.”

“Falling in love creates beauty in every facet of life. A hovering bee, a gentle flowing creek, pale blue sky, the crinkle at the corner of an old woman’s eye, bare feet on velvet moss, a songbird in a bush, even the howl of a far away wolf become so beautiful to those finding a new love. It was like that for Sassy and Hanlon, everything seemed sharper and clearer. It was like a new view of the world that they had never known existed had opened up to them. Doug Hiser Montana Mist”

“So, you are now talking to birds?” Hanlon glanced back from looking up at the tree the crow sat in and said, “Not all birds, just crows, oh, and hawks and eagles, sometimes ospreys, but never vultures.” She laughed at his attempt at humor, “Why don’t you talk to vultures?” “Well, Sassy, because vultures aren’t very good conversationalists. Doug Hiser -Montana Mist coming soon 2010”