Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

With his acquisition of Gaia this winter, Cinch is moving on up in the basin.

It was hard to catch them with all their heads up, mountains in the background. The girls, especially, having both most recently been with Bounce and Alegre (Gaia is her firstborn), concentrated on grazing, as in the pic a few posts ago.

Liberty is just a tiny little thing, though she’s only a year younger than Gaia. Molly shouldn’t have had to have a foal the year she died … but I wonder how often that happens in the wild? It happened also with Ceal and Shadow.

We used to have lots of sorrels … now she’s one of four. (Which reminds me … oddly … I had a dream last night … about a big band of greys and bays – our dominant colors …)

Three on Earth Day (hence her name). Cinch ought to breed her for her first foal as a 4-year-old. That’s pretty good. We’ll have a couple of 2-year-olds foal this year (Hannah and, probably, Sable) – not so good – and one 4-year-old (Baylee) still doesn’t look pregnant. Another 4-year-old (and orphan), Shadow, will have her second foal this year – she’s due within a week, which should make her the first this year. I saw them (her and David and Wind) last week but not close – other horses and the hunt for Spring kept drawing my attention.

Cinch kept a wary eye on me through that fantastic forelock …

He was more animated than my first visit to them this year … He has a lot of presence that makes him seem fairly big, but he’s a fairly small-bodied boy.

Love the graceful swish of his tail.

Saw lots of this …

… and caught this just before he went back to grazing.

He’s looking back at Gaia and/or Luna’s, who were coming down from their nap near Round Top for their midday drink at the roller-coaster pond (which is off to the right).

Definitely watching Luna’s … Gaia was just behind him to the left, Liberty to the right.

Pretty portraits in front of the La Sals.

The sun was high, but the shine was warm for about the first time this spring, so I sat with them for quite a while. I thought Cinch might lead them off, but they just moseyed around grazing and stayed fairly near. I leaned back like I was on the beach and soaked in the rays, the warmth, the horses, the magic. By the time I walked quietly away, they never even looked up. 🙂

We were supposed to get “significant moisture” over the region Sunday … but locally, at least, it seemed to be confined to the tips of the La Platas. On the west side of the La Platas, we got our first big Apocolypse-seeming dust storm of the year. Another storm system is forecast Wednesday through Sunday, which – if it happens – puts a crimp in my weekend plans, but do your dances, folks, for the horses to get some good rain. It’s so, so dry. Some campers started a 150-acre wildfire near Bradfield Bridge (basically south of the basin) on the Dolores River. The Forest Service and several other agencies got it under control pretty quickly, so you know they’re on alert. Other fires are burning already in other parts of Colorado.