Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Sweet, beautiful old (she’s not really thaaat old – 18) Gaia looking glam with her single, thick braid. Lovely darling girl.

Once again, Chipeta let the band wander away (they weren’t too far ahead of her), then put on a spurt of the dramatics as she trotted her way back to them in the brief light from the almost-setting sun in a little open cloud window against a stormy sky to the south.

One of those lucky catches by the camera before she was obscured by the trees between us. 🙂

Maiku had a hand – err, hoof – in the momentary situation that resulted in Rowan moving along in yesterday’s post.

Both bands were grazing close to a boundary fence where the grass was (is) good and untouched after most of the season when they’d all (the whole herd) been grazing elsewhere in Spring Creek Basin. Add a bit of recent rain to touch up the green, and more than a couple of wandering bands found this good area, which meant that I found *them*. 🙂

(There was no contact between either horses or fence.)

It didn’t last long, but she looked so WILD with her mane flying that I wanted to share her!

The poor pinon tree shows the effects of this summer’s terrible drought (in a long stretch of years of drought), but behind Chipeta, rain was moving across the southeastern/eastern horizon while the sun was setting, shining a lovely bit of light on her.

The forecast was wrong again; we GOT rain yesterday. I love it when it’s wrong in the positive. 🙂

Buckeye. Sometimes I call him “Grey” without really thinking because he reminds me so much of his (likely) great-grandsire Grey.

(The thing behind him is the back of a marker used by Colorado Parks and Wildlife in their grid patterns to count elk and deer from the air. There are at least a few of them in Spring Creek Basin that I’m aware of. And I’m not sure whether CPW actually still uses them; they’re from the days when it was Colorado Division of Wildlife. Buckeye was getting some good use out of it as a face, poll, ear, jaw and neck scratcher, then as a butt scratcher before I took this pic. :))

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Happy autumn equinox! The days already are getting noticeably shorter, and I am sooooo happy for autumn to arrive after a very long, very hot, very dry summer!

From a youngster yesterday to one of the oldest of the old guard this morning: Corazon. He was a young bachelor stallion when I started documenting, part of what I called the southside boys because they hung out – you guessed it – in the southern areas of Spring Creek Basin, as opposed to the bachelor 7, who hung out elsewhere (more interior).

There are only about five or so mustangs left who were at least weanling age (6-ish months; born that spring) when I started documenting in 2007. Corazon is one of those. 🙂 You can see he’s starting to show his age (interestingly, a lot of the pintos, especially, start to get a bit grey and grizzled about the face as they age). He’s at least 22.

The absolute best we can do for the mustangs is to manage things so they can live their full lives wild on their home ranges.

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I really want to thank you all for the kind and wonderful comments you left on my 19th anniversary post. 🙂 My goal has always been to share the mustangs of Spring Creek Basin, and while the way I do that has evolved over the years, I’m still so thrilled that you love them and love to see mustangs in all seasons and all conditions on their home range. Thank you also for the likes, and if you follow along quietly, thank you for that, too (I do the same, mostly). The mustangs and I appreciate you sharing our journey!