Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Every month, about mid-month, I make a list for myself of moonrise times leading to the full moon (which, these days (months!), is toward the ends of the months). If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you might have realized how much I adore that ol’ moon. 🙂 What I find fascinating is that, while I’m hunting particular images of it rising from a particularly interesting stretch of far ridge-horizon-line, there are an infinite number of places from which to shoot it – and get it rising over that particular far ridge-horizon-line!

In the above image, I’m on Disappointment Road, and those are the old Perkins corrals (with modern improvements from the current permittee, who has the allotment OUTSIDE Spring Creek Basin to the south. The corrals date from the days when Mr. Perkins (and another fellow/family) had one of the two (yes, two originally) allotments to graze cattle in Spring Creek Basin. The basin boundary fence is to my left along the road, and the fence you see straight ahead, right of the chute, is the boundary fence as it goes to the road. The corrals now are sometimes used to bring cattle out to a central point to release in the spring … and then collect them in the fall to truck back out.

Now I’m farther up-valley to show the moon a bit closer to the point of the promontory that is Temple Butte. (After years of calling it the unnamed promontory, we got it officially named with USGS in 2018 for Pati Temple, a much-beloved mentor and grand, long-time advocate for the mustangs with her husband, David. Thank you, Ann Bond, for bearing the load of that process!)

With all the storms and clouds and rain and thus-invisible sky lately, all thoughts of the moon had completely left my brain. These pix, taken at just right the time where the moon is between clouds, were completely the result of luck and being there. 🙂

I’m not going into the interior of Spring Creek Basin just now, and may not be able to get in for another few-some days. It has been SUCH a different few days, and the mustangs haven’t really been front and center of Mother Nature’s shenanigans (for me), so I beg your patience and forgiveness, and I promise a return to mustang pix as soon as possible!