Another beautiful face that’s worth walking a long way to greet: Mysterium.
Patches of snow on the far southern ridge is responsible for the pretty bokeh in the background. Like magic fairy lights around the pretty mustang girl. 🙂
******
On my way to Mysterium and her band, there was a little of this:
There are still patches of snow in shady places and high (elevation) places, and all that snow is giving way to little creeks and streams in the arroyos. Spring is on the way!
If any mustang knows better than Sundance (or at least as well!) how to find the best scenery in Spring Creek Basin, it’s Storm.
This handsome boy and his band have been very elusive most of the winter, and this day was almost no different. According to my GPS, I hiked nearly six miles in my quest to visit him and his family; they were so far beyond the back of beyond, it may as well have been *behind* the back of beyond!
Or maybe, it’s really the front door to the best place on Earth. 🙂
Who are we to argue?!
So many shades of warm, lustrous, glowing, golden browns in her bay!
Those patches of white in the background are shrinking, shrinking … as the snow melts and the valuable moisture seeps into the ground (or evaporates with that wild wind!).
With that thick fur coat, ferocious wind may tousle her mane, but it never ruffles Kestrel’s feathers! 😉
Two Sundances are better than one. 🙂
I may have mentioned the wind has been fierce?! Who needs fake wind for fabulous portraits of a most-handsome mustang?
******
Between the wind, the sunshine and temps in the 50s (practically tropical for us these late-winter days!), there was a bit of this yesterday:
That’s actual liquid water, flowing out of Spring Creek Basin and under a bridge along which runs the Disappointment Valley road along the southwestern/southern boundary of the basin. I call it the county-line drainage. You can see a bit of snow on the bank of the arroyo. A lot of smaller tributary arroyos feed into this one, including another large one (also fed by numerous smaller ones) that drains a large area farther to the east. These arroyos, in turn, drain to Disappointment Creek; from this point, the bridge on which I was standing when I took this pic, the creek isn’t too far down this arroyo behind me to the south(ish).
Water shapes our world in many ways here. This: a sign of spring on the way!
It’s hard to believe, but some areas of Colorado have recently been in – and/or still are! – under fire weather advisories! That ol’ wind is no joke.
Mariah wasn’t super cooperative in showing off the wind that gave her her name (thanks, Roy!), but the flip of her tail and the streamers of her mane do it pretty well!
******
“They Call The Wind Maria,” according to Wikipedia, “is an American popular song with lyrics written by Alan J. Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe for their 1951 Broadway musical, Paint Your Wagon, which is set in the California Gold Rush. Rufus Smith originally sang the song on Broadway, and Joseph Leader was the original singer in London’s West End. [1] It quickly became a runaway hit,[2] and during the Korean War, the song was among the ‘popular music listened to by the troops.’[3] Vaughn Monroe and his Orchestra recorded the song in 1951, and it was among the ‘popular hit singles at the record stores’ that year.[4] It has since become a standard, performed by many notable singers across several genres of popular music. A striking feature of the song in the original orchestration (also used in many cover versions), is a driving, staccato rhythm, played on the string instruments, that evokes a sense of restless motion.”
The song is inspirational in a number of ways. This website discusses the pronunciation of Maria/Mariah – which really had its start in a 1941 novel called “Storm” – and other fascinating info.
Doesn’t Aiyanna have the prettiest face and eyes? She and Rowan and Dundee and Buckeye were napping the other day in the couple of inches of fresh snow. Taking in a little bit of sunshine while the storm lifted above the ridges and peaks and buttes and crannies to the east and southeast. They’re still perfectly fuzzy. We still have a bit of winter to go.
Let me be clear: Spring Creek Basin does NOT look like this currently. It DID look like this Thursday morning – for a couple of daylight hours after we woke up to a couple of inches of fresh snow, after the previous fresh snow melted (a few hours after we woke up to THAT snow).
So think of the basin and lower Disappointment Valley not as covered with snow but saturated with mud (damp to downright soupy) … and imagine, if it please you, spring green and a profusion of wildflower blooms. Especially if you’re still covered with inches to feet of snow, it should be a happy vision!
Reya and her band haven’t been seen for a while, since around Thanksgiving, I think. I didn’t stop to photograph them then, so I was twice happy when I spotted them the other day during a long hike. She looks fabulous in her furry, fringed winter coat!
Fabulous!
Miss Chipeta with the long view to Utah – a little clouded but still grand. 🙂
At least 2 inches of snow greeted sunrise yesterday morning (such as it was, with snow blowing sideways nearly all day). By the end of the day, all that white had melted again, leaving us saturated with mud – again – and reveling in the awesome moisture.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 