Making Wings

Taking flight, Peace like a river, and a Vision

March 14, 2026. It’s been two years since Susan died. Her cherry tree is blossoming above her bones. The narcissus I planted are starting to bloom. Time is fluid, sometimes short while the distance seems infinite or a closeness with infinite time. Meanwhile the days which continue to come relentlessly find me attending to biology, sociology, civics, home ec., music and art. The endless high school curriculum of daily life. There’s not as much laughter as there used to be, I must keep myself entertained and of some use. I lived more than half my life with one person in one place and now half of that (the half with the good memory) is gone. I know I am not alone in this. We live amongst emptiness, as we age space is full of holes, and just beyond, the fluttering of wings.

Enuff from me.

To mark this occasion I am posting a piece that was important to Susan. A taste of her magical life. It is a long piece. It will probably say it’s too long for email so it might have to be opened in substack to get the whole story. I don’t want to break it up because it is a series of events that stayed with her over the years. When she would reach for a metaphor or label for creativity and spirituality she would often pull out the phrase “making wings”. Enjoy, and think of Snooz.

-dD

Susan Osborn - cherry blossoms

Making Wings

Some important parts of this story are missing here, as there are in every story. How did I get to NYC anyway? And what about the recording I went back to Ames Iowa to make? Stay tuned! This is not a linear ride.

Brooklyn spit me out, and I made my way from the place where it is never dark, where you never see the stars, back to the heartland I came from...fertile, black soil all the way to the horizon, lightning and thunder storms, tornados, white out blizzards and deep silent snow, rowdy wild friendships forged in the terrible frigidness of winter, and sultry heat of summer.

I returned to live with my old friend Rene’, and her 4 year old son Corrin. She was moving back to Iowa from a married life in Victoria BC, at the end of a divorce, and the diagnosis of a pre-cancerous condition. She needed me, and I needed her. I was about to record my first solo recording and knew that the shelter of old friends and that fertile land would help me birth it. We found a little house in Ames, a few blocks from the University, owned by a former college boyfriend, that was just big enough for us. Two bedrooms upstairs for Corrin and I, and Rene’ took the living room as hers.

Rene’ is one of the most creative people I have ever known, and a soul sister. We met in the midst of the Vietnam war, each breaking away from convention, each determined to reinvent what being a woman meant. We came back together then after 10 years out in the world, to compare notes and shore each other up. That year in Ames she taught me how to make soap, candles, paper, bread, and tofu, to spin wool into yarn, and weave beautiful cloth. Before either of us owned a TV or even stereo, we spent our time together making things. Always a pot of something delicious and healthy simmering on our stove. And an ongoing conversation that now spans more than 50 years, thriving even in silence.

Rene’ had an emerald thumb. That first summer with her guidance and knowledge, I helped plant and tend an abundant garden. A joy. It was almost effortless to grow anything in that rich black soil. We had plenty of sun and rain and everything just grew. We grew much of what we ate that long midwestern summer and preserved much for the coming fall and winter. Peas, radish, green beans and zuchs, tomatoes, okra, cabbage, lettuce and basil, potatoes, kale, pumpkins and squash. That summer, the recording of my first LP....yes, there were these things called Long Play albums...the garden, and the making, were all prelude to what was to come.

It began with the end of our bountiful harvest, and a desperate letter from my poet friend Jack. He said that his heart was breaking under the collapse of his 20 year marriage to Jo and that he felt he may not be able to go on. I felt so far away, and wished I could be there for him. That night, I was restless, and awakened suddenly, with a feeling of dread, certain that Jack was in some kind of danger. I rose, put on my flannel robe and slippers and sat facing the window that looked out over the sleeping garden in deep prayer and meditation, sending out in my thoughts, an angel of love to guard Jack.

My absorption was so complete that it took me a while to notice a strange physical feeling at the place in my back just below the shoulder blades where wings attach to the bone and muscle there. And then a sense of the slow growing and extension of these extra limbs fanning out in great arcs at my sides. For a moment, I wondered if my small bedroom was large enough for them to expand completely, or whether they will graze the walls on either side. I actually think I can hear the sound of their gold and white feathers swooshing the air, and feel my prayers flying, reaching their mark, enfolding my friend. After some time in this profoundly peaceful state, I crawled back in my bed, curled up in my wings and fell into a deep dreamless sleep. When I awoke in the morning, they had retracted into the place they came from and there was a kind of soft ache where they once were...a phantom limb sort of feeling.

So, I determined to make some kind of prosthesis.

Out in the back yard of our little house, amongst the remains of the flower garden, were brown bracken left over from ferns, and to me, look like feathers, the perfect components for a pair of wings. I decided to tie and weave the fronds together with grasses and raffia. They are my meditation, my making real. I spent the day in this wondrous place that making something with my hands opens for me, especially when I am out of doors, working these living materials. Time becomes very fluid and stretchy, and I am filled with a sweet sense of well being. By the end of the day, I had fashioned a pair of dark brown, three foot long wings. They are glorious, and at dusk, I carry them inside to share my day’s work with Rene’. Being Rene’, she thinks nothing is at all odd about my creation, and we continue over dinner our long ongoing conversation about art and spirit and all things beautiful.

After dinner, there was a knock on the door. We opened it to find our new friends, Mick and Walt, from Dugan’s Deli up the street. We met them over beer and backgammon, a few weeks before and have enjoyed our easy comfortable banter, no romantic confusion, just good pals. “ Hey do you two want to go on an adventure?” Mick says. In unison, Rene’ and I respond without hesitation. “Yes!” They pull out two red kerchiefs and tie them as blindfolds over our eyes and lead us out to their VW bus. “Here we go!” says Walt. We haven’t a clue what’s up, but feel excited by this unexpected opportunity for some fun.

We drove for some time and I felt the sounds of the town fall away into countryside silence, but still we had no idea where we were being taken. Soon came to a stop and we heard the back door being opened. Mick took our hands and helped us step out into the cool night air. “ We’re here!” He removed our blindfolds and there we were facing a small, gold and white four seater Cessna. YIKES! One of my greatest fears! But we have come this far. Besides, the wings! I had spent the whole day making wings!

Soon we were strapped in, I, in the copilots seat and were taxiing slowly down the runway. One of the things we did not know ‘til that moment about our new friend Walt, was that he was a pilot and that this was his plane. And then, that incredible moment when this big piece of metal with the four of us in it, somehow magically lifted off the blacktop and we were up up and away...banking to the right over the tiny airport and twinkling lights of our town below. Then straight on over the 1 mile squares of farmland laid out like a quilt. We could easily tell where we are and how far we had come. Everything is so tiny and toylike and somehow understandable. Not at all the confusing mess it can feel like sometimes on the ground. Once aloft, closer to the stars, untethered, the fear I have felt shifts to delight. We were flying, so little between us and the air, swooping and gently wandering the night sky. Same world, different perspective. When we finally came down, I felt changed. Something had shifted inside.

The making was doing it’s work.

A week later, we decided to take a road trip across Iowa to my old stomping grounds near Vermillion South Dakota. The change in the land is dramatic. Just at the edge of Iowa, before crossing into South Dakota, Highway 20 climbs from the miles of flat black farmland into soft round hills overlooking the broad Missouri River Valley. I find out that these are the famous loess hills formed by the glaciers that missed the land of my birth in Southern Minnesota and deposited this unbelievably rich soil gathered on their journey south. These hills occur in only one other place on earth and I think that is in Siberia. I always feel that once I come down onto that river valley and head north on I-29 toward the South Dakota border, that I have crossed into the West. Something wild.

It was an unusually warm late September day, and once across the border we headed immediately to Clay County Park on the banks of the Missouri. This is a river famous for it’s fast and dangerous current. Whole trucks have disappeared into it’s mysterious depths. I narrowly missed plunging into it one dark night myself, but that is another story.

This day, we found a shallow bend out of the main channel where we could wade out to a giant old cottonwood lying there on the bottom. It was hot and we stripped down to shorts and t-shirts. Rene’ said that she would teach me how to make a basket from the bark of this tree. We perched on top, gathering bark from her sides. I learned to choose sturdy but flexible pieces for the frame, forming a star where they crossed in the middle. Then the careful weaving of thinner bark strips around and around and around. Slowly, something that can contain something began to emerge. And something of my self went into each round. The day passed like a dream in the sun and water, often in silence, each of us absorbed completely in the making.

Goosebumps up my arms were the signal that the sun had drifted lower in the sky and that it was time to leave our tree trunk raft behind. We waded to shore, sunburned and pleasantly tired, small, brown bark baskets in hand. I actually felt as if I had become the basket, and held the sun and the river in my belly, and I was full.

But the day was not over, and we were hungry. We had accepted an invitation for beer, pizza and monopoly at Ed’s, a friend and incredible bassist I played with in several bands and on the fore mentioned recording. Luckily we brought along warm clothes, and changed there on the banks of the river in the fading light, and then headed into town.

Even though we were tired, it is fun seeing old friends, and spend the evening with Eddie and his wife Jenny buying and selling imaginary property, telling jokes and stories from all our travels. We reluctantly cut it short, when we realize that we have not checked in yet with our hostess for the night , and leave with hugs and promises to make the trip again soon.

Ina lives just a few blocks away. I backed out on to the street and drove the half block to where the road T’ed. We will go right. I stop, look left, and see something there in the middle of the dark road that I will never forget. We were stopped just at the top of the bluff that overlooks the Missouri in the distance.

It is Mary. She is illuminated, white and robed. Her head is hooded and bent her arms outstretched at her sides. She is looking at me with unbearable compassion. She is standing in the middle of the street in Vermillion South Dakota. I am not Catholic. It is Mary. I am completely and totally undone. I turn away to tell Rene’. “Rene’ it is Mary. Mary is there in the street.” She says “ Mary Hernandez? she asks, thinking that I am talking about a friend. “No” I say, “not Mary Hernandez.”

But by that time, Mary is gone, and I am too. The snake rising up my spine reaches my brain and my body exploded in waves of hot electricity. I know enough from my brief Kundalini yoga studies years before to keep my spine straight and chin locked , and let the waves of energy move through me. My whole body begins to shake. An internal earthquake. I am on fire.

We sat there at the stop sign for some time. I was consumed. The waves subsided and I felt beached. We were both weeping. We know something has happened, though neither of us knows for sure what. We make our way the few blocks to Ina’s, and park the car, sitting there in the dark until we can compose ourselves, slowing our breath, feeling the residue of the shimmering mystery that has visited us there.

I have rarely spoken of that evening. This was over 40 years ago. I can still feel the echo in my body as if it were yesterday. It is something about the alchemy of making and prayers, nature and deep loving friendships, and the spaces in between. What is a vision? What parts the veil between the worlds? And in the very rare moments it is parted, what do we do with what we experience there? Casteneda reports that Don Juan said it is dangerous to stalk the mystery. Maybe it is not my job to understand, but to follow.

As for Mary, I can feel her watching us, still and always, her heart holding all of us here at the edge of the universe, as we tend the garden of our lives, making wings. All these years later, she is still there in the middle of Chestnut street on the cliffs above the Missouri River in my mind.

I have a feeling about what she was trying to tell me. Something about what matters. Something about compassion, and connection to my body and the earth. I can still feel the strong clear, current pulling me, caressing my skin in the hot summer afternoon sun.

We had just one year together in that comma in our lives to rejuvenate and ready for all that followed. That next Spring, before we could plant another garden, Rene’, cancer free, and Corrin returned to Canada to be near Corrin’s father. I packed up and drove East again to the Big Apple to take another bite.

Just before I left town, I stopped at the hospital to visit a friend’s mother who was dying of cancer. We had become friends too in my visits to her bedside over the long weeks. It had been painful and a privilege to witness this woman dealing with the end of her life. So much unresolved, and so little skill to resolve it, raging against all the inequities. We found refuge in song. I singing, and she dissolving in the listening. I knew that this would be our last visit. She was slouched in a wheel chair in the corner of her room, a living skeleton, her eyes closed and her disease ridden bones barely rising and falling, the sound of her rattling breath a sign. I don’t know if she heard me. I told her I loved her and that she could go, and that I was going too. We were both moving on.

About the time I crossed the eastern Iowa border into Illinois, she too made her passage into the mystery.

“The Seed is in the Bloom” Susan Osborn, from “Reunion”, Bill Lauf - tenor guitar, Ralf Illenberger - guitar, Jim Bredouw - keyboards.