I love that beard! 🙂 Pretty Piedra clearly has been to the winter spa. We don’t have the snow of the surrounding area (I was astounded at the snow everywhere BUT Disappointment Valley!), but we do have a bit of mud (although, also not nearly the mud of the places that have melting snow!).
Even muddy-girl, she’s gorgeous.
Sundance relaxes after a fairly quiet little chat with a gang of young ruffians, aka bachelor stallions. 🙂
Actually, they’re not too bad, those youngsters, and they can all learn a thing or three from stout Sundance.
Our world may be mainly brown again after the snow has melted (note to Mother Nature: We’ll take more of the white stuff, please!), but this little snow squall – yes, while the sun was still shining! – over Spring Creek Basin sure gave us a magical couple of minutes. That’s all it lasted – just a couple of amazing minutes. I was SO delighted to have a semi-willing model in Mr. Flash, seen here just looking back at his compadres.
That’s not a race you’re gonna win, ponies. 🙂
I rolled up to see a couple of bands grazing below the road just moments before the little resident herd of pronghorns (there are about 20 or so hanging out together and very visible in Spring Creek Basin lately) made *their* presence known (to me, at least). But as the pronghorn bucks and does started moving up the hill toward the horses, high spirits in both species kicked in, and all I had to do was aim and hold down the shutter button!
Pronghorns are fascinating mammals – the fastest in North America. While they are numerous in many parts of the West, they’re NOT so numerous in western Colorado, and because of that, they’re not hunted here. Seeing a group of 20 is a cool sighting of a fairly big group (most of the rest of the year, they’re in much smaller groups). Also very fun to see: pronghorns racing along with the mustangs!
Pretty soon, I think curiosity took over on the part of the horses (or they *knew* they weren’t going to win any races!), and they stopped to watch as the pronghorns sped past.
If you’ve never seen pronghorns on the run, you’re really missing out. Even at what for them, I imagine, is a relaxed pace, they’re fast. And seeming effortless!
Each group eventually disappeared from my sight … but pretty soon the horses appeared again, coming toward my area of the hill as they grazed. When I walked out a bit, I saw the pronghorns, settled down in a group, napping and grazing. This human was feeling the peace. 🙂
Corazon is looking a little moisture streaked and bedraggled the morning after a nice snowfall recently. … But still ever so handsome as he flirts with his mare!
Hondo follows his mares over a little finger of a ridge. They were moseying on, and he was initially slow to follow. Wind in the winter usually means weather is coming!
Mostly, we’re in the mud now in Disappointment Valley. Up-valley still has good snow, but lower, ours has melted, and the warm-ish temps keep it thawed for all but the deepest parts of the early, early mornings.
Gaia-love is always a bright spot, even when she tries to “hide” unseen in a cluster of pinon-juniper. Her broad, bright blaze is a welcome “white spot” among the green (trees) and brown (landscape).
There will come a day – and not too far in the future if past experience holds – when we’ll be in the midst of ultra-dry … and wish we had some mud. 🙂 And so we carry on!
I am so in love with just about every millimeter of this image! Other than a tiny sliver off the right side, it’s the full frame of what came out of the camera (*why* actual photo frames are made for sizes that require large slivers to be sliced off images as they come out of cameras, I will NEVER understand). After years (literally, her entire life) of being photographed, Winona is not the most cooperative of photographic subjects in Spring Creek Basin (I understand, I do, as I’m the one most often pointing a long tube in her direction!). This day, after a fresh blanket of snow that ranged from an inch in lower Disappointment Valley to a whopping 12 inches (or more) several miles up-valley, I longed to get a pic of her with that golden galleta from this past autumn with the blue-whites of the far ridges in one frame, so I was almost “shooting from the hip,” trying to keep her in focus as she walked across the little rise to join her family … and this was one of the results.
Since she was a little bitty buckskin baby (I did say that grey is our dominant color …?), when I foalsat (!) her as she napped in fields of light-lit grass on summer afternoons and evenings, mama Kestrel and daddy Comanche grazing nearby, I have loved, loved, loved, LOVED her. 🙂 And out of the thousands (?!) of photos I’ve taken of her, this one probably is my very most favorite ever.
Madison and Tenaz exchange breaths on a not-too-cold day in late December. 🙂
The day turned out to be mostly cloudy, but it was warmer than it had been for at least a couple of weeks, and it was marvelous!
Who else is experiencing holiday-season weariness? 🙂
Or maybe it was just a little shut-eye on a beautiful morning after a couple of inches of fresh snow! Buckeye wasn’t in the least interested in me hiking out to see how he and his band were doing. Snoozing was the order of the morning!
I love the holidays; really, I do! But endless ads and emails and sales and offers and ETCETERA – the commercialization – is endlessly wearying. 🙂 Take a lesson from Buckeye, and take a little nap. You’ll feel better for it!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 