Creeks in Disappointment country (probably nowhere in the west) do not run straight. They meander. A lot.
When I’m using an arroyo as a pathway to get somewhere (whether broad or narrow, shallow or deep, they are flatter than surrounding areas, and sometimes, the extra miles (those curves) are outweighed by the lack of elevation change), I often “cut” the curves a bit, especially if I don’t have to climb too much.
Above, Dundee is doing exactly the same thing to get from where she and the band were grazing (the pic of Rowan a few days ago) to where water was trickling above ground in the arroyo bottom (which happened to be the Spring Creek arroyo).
Another tip for hiking in mustang country: Follow the mustangs’ trails. 🙂
Tenaz, handsome boy that he is, photobombs also-handsome Maiku, striking a handsome-mustang pose.
I mean, how much more *handsome* do you need – or can you take?! – in one image? 🙂
For being a grey (but always changing), damp day, Friday was one of the most beautiful times in the basin in recent memory (and that’s saying a lot because they’re ALL beautiful). And I was lucky enough to find a few bands semi-together, which means my camera (and I) was (were) super happy.
In this pic, you can see the snow line in the far distance to the south on the heavily pinon-juniper treed ridge that forms the southern boundary of Disappointment Valley (beyond Spring Creek Basin). The basic elevation of the basin got around a quarter-inch of moisture, maybe a bit more in places. You won’t be surprised to know that we need a lot more.
In the good speaking-of-more category, though, I’ll have more images of both of these handsome boys in coming posts. And THAT is happy news. 🙂
This image of Winona is one of those that doesn’t begin to do justice to the sheer, stunning gorgeousity of the actual scene.
If you look closely, you’ll see snowflakes. 🙂 And yes, that’s sunlight in the distance of the western basin.
It was one of the several waves of rain(ish)/snow(ish)/graupel(for sure) that flew wind-driven over Spring Creek Basin and greater Disappointment Valley yesterday, looking amazingly amazing and not leaving a *lot* of moisture (? I couldn’t believe how not-muddy it was). As we know in Disappointment country, ANY moisture is good-and-welcome moisture, and we’ll take every hard-won flake and drop.
Better late than never, and when I finally got my act together, I thought Valentine’s Day would be the best day for this rundown.
As usual, these are 12 (and a bonus) images from the last year that came from each month. This year, I think, most of these photos have been on the blog previously. A little reminiscence of the events surrounding each image will follow the photos. Sometimes it’s those emotions and memories that make a particular image special for the photographer, and these are no exception to that. Just being out with the mustangs, in Spring Creek Basin, no matter the weather, is the very best part of what is impossible to share.
Enjoy … and please consider this is my love letter to Spring Creek Basin and its mustangs from 2024. 🙂
January last year was at least somewhat snowy (this year was very much NOT snowy). Skywalker had been a bachelor with a couple of bands until sometime last year, and here he is with some horses from one of those bands. Completing the composition is part of the Spring Creek canyon rimrocks in the near background and Utah’s La Sal Mountains in the far background. (I wish they were that snowy this year.)
This was a magical February visit with Mariah and her band. The low-angle sunshine made each snowflake a visible bit of earthly magic, and when she looked back at somebody – shazam. Magic captured.
Couldn’t pass up this snowy March day in the basin with Temple! Clearly, she had been enjoying the moisture and excuse to roll in the mud. I love the sunshine on her and the falling snow blurring the background.
I had so many opportunities with the mustangs in April, but this image of Hollywood was just *the one*. You all know exactly what I mean. (To update, I haven’t seen him again since the image I posted earlier this winter. It doesn’t mean anything other than I haven’t seen him. …)
When Spring Creek is running with rainwater, that is a time not to miss photographing it because it doesn’t happen often and water doesn’t run in the arroyo bed for very long. When Skywalker moseyed to the edge of the creek in May, just upstream of the canyon, the scene came alive with story: mustang drinking from an ephemeral stream in the desert.
In June, I was lucky to catch Sundance’s band near Odin’s band … and luckier still to see Sundance and Odin having a friendly little chat! Elder stallion and growing young stallion; what a moment. I’d love to know what wisdom Sundance was imparting to young Odin.
Terra’s stallion adores her. And I mean *adores* her. They travel with another band, but Venture has eyes only for Terra. This image is from July, when it’s hot and dry and the horses just like to doze.
Personally, this is one of my favorite images of the year because those are two of my favorite stallions: Storm and Buckeye. With their bands grazing nearby on this warm August evening, the boys greeted each other quietly and respectfully before returning to their mares.
Here’s your Valentine’s Day image, taken last September. 🙂 Buckeye and Rowan, especially, seem to have a special fondness for each other.
After Storm lost his band in October, the mares went through a couple of younger stallions that couldn’t seem to keep them. Flash ended up with Gaia … then also with Mysterium. And finally, as you know now, he gathered all of Storm’s girls (which, I think, probably was due more to them wanting to be together and evading the youngster that had them than to any particular skill Flash had at stealing them!). (I’ve seen Storm just once since he lost the band, way deep in the southeastern part of the basin.)
Last November, we had some great snow, and we were so optimistic for the winter to come! … And that was pretty much it. Here it is February, and we’re desperate for moisture of any kind while we watch the dirt turn to dust, to powder. But in November, Terra was a gorgeous girl in the sunlit snow, and life was good.
We had more lovely light in December – as seen glowing around lovely Winona – but not a heckuva lot of snow.
And as usual, a bonus:
Buckeye’s girls. 🙂 I don’t remember what caused them to run right past me, but I was stoked to capture this image of them nearly in a row, especially just as Bia was leaping a bit of sage or saltbush!
Thanks for following along, happy Valentine’s Day to you and your loved ones, and if we can have a bit of a love(ly) wish … more snow, please! 🙂
*** Update Friday morning: Disappointment Valley is getting RAIN! Not snow, RAIN. In February. In Colorado. Well, you know we’re in desperate need of moisture, so I’ll take it. (But 38F is hard on the wildlife under rain.)
Well, not only did we not get any of the semi-forecast snow Tuesday night (in the forecast, out of the forecast, in … out … ), the sky was as clear as crystal studded with diamonds, showing off that glorious ol’ moon at its best and brightest!
Earlier in the day (shown), we had semi-optimistic clouds (though nothing came of their presence), and also howling wind.
Temple was trying to take advantage of the semi-protection of a lone juniper (the wind was from the right/south), and you can see that she’s not the first mustang to ever seek shelter beneath its branches. It’s also in a bit of a shallow drainage on a hillside, so that might have helped, too.
Not long after this pic was taken, most of the rest of her family joined her, but apparently, there was some disagreement about who should stand where (maybe, about who had the seniority to stand most protected?), and they went off grazing again, leaving Temple (mostly) at peace (having, apparently, prevailed in her seniority). 🙂
P.S. What looks like a tiny dark slash at sort of upper left in the pic is a raven winging his/her way across the scene.
Piedra is a couple of years older than Kestrel, and they have known each other literally all of Kestrel’s life. Even when they were in different bands, with different stallions, their bands were close to each other. They were two of the first to teach me why some bands travel together (it’s the mares).
It’s amazing to me to see that level of dedicated friendship.
Mustangs are amazing.
Piedra and Kestrel both were named by me at the beginning of my documentation of the herd. Piedra was young and the brown-grey of a young horse born brown or bay and turning grey. I don’t remember the exact steps of thoughts I went through, but I loved the name of the Piedra River that flows out of the San Juan Mountains near Pagosa Springs. She had a simple star on her forehead, and I found that “piedra” means stone in English (“for example, una piedra preciosa means ‘a precious stone'”). That was good enough for me, and precious Piedra was named. 🙂
Kestrel was a weanling filly, still with her mother, Luna, after the 2007 roundup, and I have a particular love for kestrels, fierce small falcons that are abundant in Disappointment Valley. Basically, I just wanted to name a mustang “Kestrel,” and she was beautiful and deserving, and it stuck!
She’s following Dundee to water trickling along the surface of the Spring Creek arroyo around the bend to my right. A number of bands had gathered above the arroyo – very peacefully – and I’m sure the water was the reason.
Later, they’d all gone their separate ways, still, very peaceful and calm.
The day of this pic of Cassidy Rain was warm(ish) and windy (can we skip the wind until actual spring?). I caught sight of a couple of band members on an isolated little ridge-mound between some open ground and a rising, tree-covered hillside behind. The rest of the band was in a semi-protected little cove between the ridge-mound and the main hillside. I found a rocky little drainage and perched on a series of rocks until I found a comfortable one. The horses watched me watching the horses, and we enjoyed the warmth. Based on the number of closed eyes in that series of photos, they were fighting the sleepies as much as I was in that comfortable little area!
Cassidy Rain was named by me. She shared her birthday with the then-2-year-old daughter of our then-herd manager, and I liked the name. And the day I found her, I was poking along the road back in the northeastern part of Spring Creek Basin, in the drizzle, wondering whether I was an idiot for continuing to drive … or whether I’d find horses just around any/every bend that kept appearing along the way.
Thus did Cassidy Rain become a two-name/combined-name mustang. 🙂
An additional note related to yesterday’s post of Maiku: She’s the same base color – dark bay – and she may be distantly related to him. Cassidy Rain’s sire was a dark-bay pinto named Cinch, for the white “girth”-like marking on his side. (Very sadly, he was the one on-site casualty of the 2011 roundup.) She got his color, but as you can see, only a couple of little bits of his white markings.
We need some of the second part of her name. Or snow. We’re not fussy, ever. (As of the publication of this post, the temps have dropped again, and ice has appeared on water sources overnight again. We’re hoping for snow this week!)
This portrait of handsome Maiku was taken a couple of weeks ago in the northwestern part of Spring Creek Basin. There are more trees in that area of the basin than many other parts, being a bit higher and getting more moisture. … I don’t spend a lot of time in that area because the horses aren’t there frequently, but it’s beautiful, and I love it when they ARE there.
While roaming around with them, I was kinda shocked at the sheer number of dead trees … like the one behind Maiku.
Not to belabor the point, but if we don’t get some winter soon (snow? please?!), we’re going to see a lot more trees succumb to drought. They’re kind of a big red flag.
Maiku’s name comes from the Ute language, as these are ancestral lands of the Ute people in addition to others such as the Navajo (Diné). I try to keep in mind that these lands have an extraordinarily long history intertwined with Native people, and hopefully we can protect at least some of them as much as possible and as their original stewards did and would.
On this website citing facts about Ute people, written mainly for school-age youngsters, I found this information about the Ute language: “maiku (pronounced similar to “my-kuh”) is a friendly greeting.” And I thought that was a great name for him as a uniquely patterned foal. I’ve since learned that it might be pronounced a bit closer to the name “Mike,” but I still pronounce it “my-kuh” when referring to our handsome little pinto stallion with the single white slash across his withers. 🙂 I wouldn’t say that he delivers especially friendly greetings to other bands – or visiting stallions! But he’s still very unique!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 