Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

I’m not really sure what it is about this scene that I like so much. The band had been napping with some other bands, and at some unknown-to-this-human signal, grazing among all the horses recommenced. While the other horses grazed where they’d been napping, Buckeye’s mares decided to forage farther afield. Aiyanna was leading at this point, and she’s out of the frame to the right, up the hill.

Buckeye followed along, of course (the tree at left is the same tree at right in the pic of Dundee and Rowan).

I was fairly far away, but something about the background and smoky, diffused light caught my attention. (Don’t worry, the smoke wasn’t from local fires, and after a little more recent rain, our sky is much brighter again.) …

Just something a bit different.

Immediately after a brief apparent difference of opinion, Skywalker seems to look for his friend Sancho’s forgiveness. What a sweetheart.

A few bands were napping in fairly close proximity to each other a few days ago in the basin, so I took advantages of faces up (not hidden-in-grass grazing) to take some pix of handsome Buckeye and his lovelies, Dundee, Aiyanna and Rowan. They’ve been together almost a full year now (remember, Flash had them for about the first week and a half), and they seem pretty devoted to each other. Things change, of course, but seeing these four together lifts my spirits in a place where my spirits are always high.

Who needs more peace? (Spoiler: That’s a trick question, of course. :))

Aspen moseys on ahead of the band. I love that green on the hills and ridges in the background. Some in the nearer background (there’s a big arroyo in the lower part/mid-ground of the pic) is greasewood and shadscale and four-wing saltbush (salt desert shrubs), but much of the green in the background is grass: grama, galleta, sand dropseed, alkali sacatone, etc. It’s a bountiful summer (thank goodness for even our sporadic monsoon rains!).