Elsa Barker on horseback in snow, Tecolotenos, San Miguel Co, New Mexico ::  Photo: S. Omar Barker (1950)  :: [Scott Horton]

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Northern Lights. Something in the cold, wet atmosphere brought them out. I grabbed Lipsha's arm. We floated into the field and sank down, crushing green wheat. We chewed the sweet grass tips and stared up and were lost. Everything seemed to be one piece. The air, our faces, all cool, moist, and dark, and the ghostly sky. Pale green licks of light pulsed and faded across it. Living lights.  Their fires lobbed over, higher, higher, then died out in blackness. At times the whole sky was ringed in shooting points and puckers of light gathering and falling, pulsing, fading, rhythmical as breathing. All of a piece. As if the sky were a pattern of nerves and our thought and memories traveled across it. As if the sky were one gigantic memory for us all. Or a dance hall. And all the world's wandering souls were dancing there. I thought of June. She would be dancing if there was a dance hall in space. She would be dancing a two-step for wandering souls. Her long legs lifting and falling. Her laugh an ace. Her sweet perfume the way all grown-up women were supposed to smell. Her amusement at both the bad and the good. Her defeat. Her reckless victory. Her sons.

-Louise Erdrich ::  Love Medicine

Snow storm on the road to Rincon Montoso, Tecolotenos, New Mexico Photographer: S. Omar Barker Date: 1950s? Negative Number HP.2007.20.312

Rider on horseback in snow, Tecolotenos, New Mexico Photographer: S. Omar Barker Date: 1950? New Mexico Magazine Collection, Negative Number HP.2007.20.313