
Chipeta, looking very fuzzy and wonderfully wuzzy a couple of weeks ago when the ridges still had snow.
Dear Santa: We’d like some snow for Christmas. Thank you very much! 🙂
Happy winter solstice, folks!

Chipeta, looking very fuzzy and wonderfully wuzzy a couple of weeks ago when the ridges still had snow.
Dear Santa: We’d like some snow for Christmas. Thank you very much! 🙂
Happy winter solstice, folks!

The view from the hill, up out of the arroyo, was pretty grand. And the mountains aren’t a bad backdrop. 😉
******
Happy big 7-0 to friend, fellow mustang advocate and writer extraordinaire, Kathryn Wilder!
She is, as many of you may know, the author of “Desert Chrome: Water, A Woman, and Wild Horses in the West,” and her new book, “The Last Cows: On Ranching, Wonder, and a Woman’s Heart,” will be out next fall.
Read more of her writing at https://katwilderwriter.com/

Temple took the high road across a deep arroyo, and I took the low road in the deep arroyo. 🙂
Eventually, I did have to climb the steep hillside up out of it. Though she looks like she’s ignoring me, as I came huffing and puffing up on the hill with them, the horses looked like they wondered what the heck I’d been doing down there anyway!

It was still pretty muddy in the area where I took this pic of Maiku, and the horses were moving slowly.
It may make the going harder, but we’ll be glad of that moisture in the ground when the warm temperatures roll around again.

Juniper walked down this ridge and then stopped to pose beneath Temple Butte, named for one of our original amazing advocates, Pati Temple. Lovely ladies, both.

Handsome Tenaz with one of his young mares, seen over the back of a closer horse that was grazing. On that particular day (before the snow), it was trying to spit rain, and a rainbow, which had been spectacular and long-lasting and that faded and came back at least a couple of times, was stubbornly (!) NOT appearing while I was in the basin in the presence of horses – even though the clouds were opening to the sunshine and closing like a camera’s shutter.
If you look closely, you can see the sprinkles.
I never did get a pic of the rainbow with the horses, but it was a beautiful visit with the band nonetheless.

Recently, shortly after I entered Spring Creek Basin, I saw a small group of mule deer in the very same vicinity as a large group of pronghorns. Because many of the pronghorns were napping in the lovely sunshine, I passed them, then walked back down a short distance to photograph them, hoping that was enough to not rouse them.
The deer were on their own mission and went over the edge of the hill and out of sight before I could get them all in the same frame, but the pronghorns were slow to worry (usually, they’re super wary).

Eventually they got up and started to follow the direction of the deer. I was happy to see how many fawns there appeared to be. Even for the fastest land mammals in North America, survival of the youngest is not assured. (They are not hunted in this part of Colorado; there simply aren’t enough of them. I called this a “big group,” but there were only about 15. I think there may be no more than around 25, maybe 30 (??), in the whole valley.)

Their famous speed wasn’t on display as they ambled (if a pronghorn can ever be said to amble!) off the hill following the deer. It was cool to see them, and the deer, enjoying a lovely, sunshiney day in the basin, as I was!