Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Claude also entertained a packed house with his slideshow, an illustrated life journey from young buckaroo to dogsledder to mountain man to wildlife and nature photographer and back full circle to horses: He uses his images to increase awareness and educate people about wild horses. Images he has taken in all four of Colorado’s herd areas grace his newest book, Colorado’s Wild Horses, which you can find at most local bookstores or order from his Web site, www.wildshots.com.

The event was organized by the San Juan Mountains Association’s Kathe Hayes, who organizes volunteer efforts in partnership with the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management on San Juan Public Lands – of which Spring Creek Basin is a part.

It was awesome to see so many people there, and I hope they raised a lot of money for the horses! That money will go to various projects in the basin, including but not limited to fence maintenance and repair and tamarisk removal. Kathe organizes the “alternative spring break” program every year, which in our case brings some enthusiastic University of Missouri students to the great wild West, where mustangs still roam free, to work on projects in the basin and elsewhere in the Dolores District of San Juan Public Lands.

In addition to the money raised tonight, local pub Steamworks Brewing Co. has pledged a percentage of its proceeds raised from beer-at-the-bar sales for the whole month of August! I’m not a beer drinker, but I have to think that would amount to some serious cabbage, as a friend and former co-worker would say.

So kudos to Kathe and Claude and everyone involved in this effort to get the word out about our ponies!

This post also marks my return to Colorado from vacation with my family in Texas. I had a super-wonderful-fabulous time helping my dad celebrate his 60th birthday and my folks celebrate their 39th anniversary just six days later! All our ponies at home are doing well, and it was great to smell, touch and ride my big grey mare and a couple of others and do some groundwork with the youngsters. I may not like crowds of people, but I’m nowhere more comfortable or happy than surrounded by horses.

I got in at 1:30 a.m. (after a 15-hour drive), and by 9 a.m. was on the road to the basin. Can’t keep a woman away from her horses?!

Karen Keene Day is an artist who spends summers in Ouray and the rest of the year in South Carolina. She has an excellent, bold, beautiful, bright, full-of-life style, and wild horses are the subject of her heart and her paintbrush. She has been to Spring Creek Basin several times and was present at the roundup last August. I met up with her and we drove around the loop looking for horses. The weather cooperated beautifully, but the evidence of past rain is obvious in the deeper ruts and washes across the road. Some of those little washes on the east side of the loop road are creeping in toward where the Jeep’s tires really need to go. Time to start carrying the shovel along. Be careful, and especially watch that washout a little past the road to Klondike Basin; it has come in at least a foot since I was there last.

The horses still showed signs of being chased (two weeks ago!), unfortunately. We saw Steeldust’s band and the Bachelor 7 over by the northwest end of Knife Ridge. Everybody was there, and I saw little Storm through the binoculars. Straight east of them, around the loop and on the other side of Knife Ridge and Lizard Mesa were Poco (we saw him first), Bones and Roach. Closer to the road just around a curve were Bounce, Gaia and Alegre. While we were focused on beautiful Gaia, Poco, Bones and Roach silently disappeared into the trees and over the saddle – there’s a trail right there that leads down into that little valley between the ridges. It made me so sad to see them disappear like that because they’re usually the most relaxed around visitors, and we were pretty far from them in the first place. They were chased off by the guy back in early August, but they weren’t part of the groups he chased with his truck. In contrast, Bounce, Alegre and Gaia were pretty relaxed. Bounce watched us while Alegre grazed calmly behind him! She is such a good new mother, but she has gotten to where, with just a little patience, she’ll stand in the presence of vehicles and not immediately run away. I don’t think the guy saw or bothered them that day.

Ham

🙂 Too cute for words! She stood like that for several seconds while Karen and I took pictures of her from inside the Jeep.

Guardian

Bounce, looking very relaxed and calm while Alegre grazed just behind him.

Gaia and Alegre

Notice that Alegre, grazing, is paying full attention to us. And look how big is baby Gaia! She’s such a big, stocky girl and full of life. They finally moved off, following Poco’s band, and we sat in the parked Jeep until they disappeared over the saddle so they wouldn’t feel at all like we were coming after them. They paused on the far side of the arroyo at the base of Lizard Mesa, and Gaia reared up and danced on her hind legs in front of Alegre, clearly asking Mama to play. Didn’t get any pictures of that, but it was awesome to see!

On around the road, the landscape opens up to the north with a good view of that area between the northeast hills and the east-west hill, so I stopped and scanned with the binoculars. Finally caught a swish of tail up in the trees – grey horse, but she was tail-to-us, so I couldn’t tell at that point if it was Houdini or Grey/Traveler. They were up on the hillside in the trees just slightly south of the area where Poco, Bones and Roach and Seven’s band were on Aug. 2 before the guy chased them off.

There’s grass in them thar’ hills! And that little water hole right by the road is still full of water, so it’s a great place for the ponies to be. Karen and I checked the water hole off the doubletrack at “east park,” but it’s still dry and cracked. There’s still water in the pond below the roller-coaster ridge road, and because of Traveler’s location, I’m guessing there’s still water in Wildcat Spring. There are short little ribbons of water and pockets and seeps in places in the arroyos, but it looks pretty dry out there. Karen said she thinks it looks a lot more dry this August than last. What I know is that the horses look fabulous; they were pretty lean last August, all competing for forage before the roundup. I love to see Alegre (all the mares) looking in such good condition – feeding her baby very well and still finding enough to eat to look so good. Excellent!

While I watched through the binocs, another grey head popped up – Grey! But that was a signal to Houdini, and she started trotting downhill, out of the trees, leading Iya, Jif, Two Boots and Twister behind her. Oh, that really unnerved me. We were parked on the road, a LONG way away from them. It is EXTREMELY uncharacteristic for them to run at the sight of a (my?) vehicle, but they were traveling toward us when that guy drove on down the road, stopped their direction of travel, turned them around and chased them back the way they had come. STILL afraid of vehicles?! 😦 Not happy.

So we waited and watched while Houdini led them into the open toward the road. I wish I was good with distances, but I’m not. They were a long way away; hard to see except through the binoculars. They eventually got strung out: Houdini was making a beeline toward the open, across the road and down toward the east-west hill, but Grey/Traveler, Jif, Twister and Two Boots were lagging behind. Iya caught up to her mother, but then she stopped (on or near the road, it looked like) and stood facing Daddy Grey, Big Sis Two Boots, Big Bro Twister and Auntie Jif (she’s really related only to 2B) with Mama behind her. I was worried about them being so strung out like that. Grey/Traveler had started grazing, and Jif and the yearlings did the same – above the road. Grey finally marched out to have a chat with Houdini, and the others finally followed him down so they were all together. Then it was nap time. I inched the Jeep around the road to where they were, but out in the open, with a clear view of anything coming, Houdini was finally pretty calm.

Catching some zzzz's

Left to right: Jif, Grey/Traveler and Two Boots.

Meanwhile, a little to the right …

Baby love

… Iya appeared to watch over Twister while he napped lying down. (I just happened to catch her as she nipped a fly or buggy bug away from her chest.) Houdini was just a little farther to the right from them, grazing.

These two photos were taken from the Jeep, from the road, straight up from them. I was so relieved that not only did they relax enough to stop moving away but actually eventually turned their hindquarters to us as they napped – a sign they were comfortable where they were and with where we were. A good time to leave them be.

We drove on, and I showed Karen the little entrance to Wildcat Spring. We turned around there and slipped back past Grey’s band to go back clockwise around the loop road. They never moved. Happiness. 🙂

Steeldust’s band had come over the hill south of there but still quite a distance away, so we got to see them again but not Poco’s or Bounce’s bands. And we never saw Seven’s band. We didn’t go into the south, so we never saw the pintos, but an email from David Glynn of Ophir said he found some of the southside boys with Bruiser’s band Sunday. I’ve been wondering if the Bachelor 7 will ever leave Steeldust alone, and now some of the other little boys are trying to hook up with the pintos! Ha! I haven’t seen those guys for a while, so one of my missions this coming weekend will be to hike in and get the low-down on their situation. David said Spook looks great.

To end a rather long post, I want to recount something else David said in his email. He got to the basin late Saturday and rode out but didn’t see any horses. He called it “spooky” and said, “Made me understand how terrible it would be if we ever lost this herd.”

True. But they’re there, and they’re well and healthy and mysterious and magical – and free.