The following pix are from sunset the night of Oct. 28 (I couldn’t think of anything spookier for today’s post!).
Morning the 29th was grey and dark – and raining from the heavens! – and I was fully delighted by both the light show … and then with all of the RAIN (0.86 inch total)!
Am I right, or am I right?! The above is nearly straight out of my camera – I sized it and applied some sharpening. That’s looking west.
This is the spookiest part of the post (!). Looking east toward/across/beyond Spring Creek Basin. Again, the only thing I did was size it and apply some sharpening.
And a bit closer as the color was absolutely exploding.
The above are from my camera; the below – for wider views – from my phone (again, nothing but sizing and sharpening):
And:
I don’t know about sailors (any folks on actual waves are half a continent away), but *I* was the very best kind of astounded!
And very grateful for the rain overnight and the next morning. 🙂
Autumn-gold-and-tall grasses (galleta, grama, alkali sacaton), long, deep shadows. Must be fall. 🙂
If there’s anything that says fall in the West – that’s NOT glowing aspen – it’s glowing cottonwood trees. We have at least two varieties here in Southwest Colorado (I think – please correct me if I need correcting!): narrowleaf and Fremont. Don’t ask me which is pictured, but here’s what Google’s AI-generated (!) search has to say about the differences between the species:
Here are some ways narrowleaf cottonwood and Fremont cottonwood compare:
Size Fremont cottonwoods can grow to be 70–90 ft tall and have a diameter of 2–3 ft, while narrowleaf cottonwoods can grow to be up to 60 ft tall.
Leaves
Fremont cottonwood leaves are shiny, triangular to heart-shaped, and light green with white veins. Narrowleaf cottonwood leaves are narrow (3/4–1 1/2 in wide) by 2–6 in long, with a round base and a very pointed tip.
Fruit
Fremont cottonwood fruit is light brown and egg-shaped, and it bursts into three to four sections to release its seeds.
Habitat
Fremont cottonwoods grow in wet areas within arid climates, while narrowleaf cottonwoods grow along streambanks in dry mountains, desert shrublands, and prairie grasslands.
Uses
Fremont cottonwoods are used for streambank protection, wildlife food and shelter, shade for livestock and recreation facilities, ornamental plantings, and windbreaks.
I don’t know how tall the above-pictured cottonwood is, but it’s tall – especially when you realize it’s rooted in that little arroyo (standing in the bottom, it was easy to climb into and out of, but it was still deeper than I am tall):
There aren’t a lot of cottonwoods in Spring Creek Basin, probably mostly because there aren’t a lot of consistent sources of water. I know of several (well, a few of the several?) that have died in the 17 years I’ve been intimately acquainted with the basin. Drought. 😦
The above pix are from my phone. The below are from my camera:
That pic would be splendidly *perfect* if there were a mustang *right there*! 🙂 One year, I’ll catch them at just the right time and place (and hopefully this wise old tree will continue that long).
Temple Butte through a perfect little window of leaves.
Cottonwoods line the entire length of Disappointment Creek, which runs (clear to its confluence with the Dolores River) with water from February-ish to late July in a good year (into August in a *really* good year, which this was not, water-wise), and which is entirely outside Spring Creek Basin.
Hopefully ALL the trees and shrubs and grasses and ponds and seeps and catchments and horses, pronghorns, elk and deer and other critters throughout our parched region will reap the benefits of the forecast rain … today through Sunday! Fingers and hooves crossed!
From above Disappointment Road looking up-valley – Spring Creek Basin from about mid-ground at left to background. The magic treasure under the rainbow.
We got sprinkles but nothing spectacular in the rain department … unless, of course, you count the rainbow glowing ahead of the rain. 🙂
**** Update: Around 5 a.m., we got a *spectacular* thunder-and-lightning storm that brought the rain in toad-gagging torrents. Every arroyo and creek in the valley is surely rolling and roiling. Catchments hopefully have gotten much-needed infusions by the gallon.
When I went into the basin Saturday evening, this was the view to the northwest beyond Spring Creek Basin, its namesake canyon and lower Disappointment Valley. You can just see eastern Utah’s northern La Sal Mountains at the right edge of the vast curtain of storm-rain.
This pic, with its sage-covered foreground, semi-jagged horizon and gorgeous-glorious sky with angel rays above an isolated downpour of distant rain, illustrates *The West* to me.
Fast forward a couple of hours, and this was developing above our southeastern horizon: end of Valentine Mesa, Temple Butte, McKenna Peak, the crowns of submarine ridge and Brumley Point over Knife Edge, The Glade in the far distance (hi, Rick!) beyond Round Top and Flat Top.
At the same time as above, this was the view to the west. I thought we were going to get last light through that window to the right of the sun, but the clouds had other ideas.
While my very long lens is perfect for capturing pix of the mustangs, not even my wide-angle lens (if I’d had it along) is wide enough for this amazing view of Storm’s band under the, uh, storm clouds (he WAS born under a storm!).
The light on those clouds – and the very far ridges (bottom center between submarine ridge and Brumley Point) – with that narrow band of dark, dark blue (that’s rain away off yonder) … WOW. And just right of very bottom center is a young wild pony who recently left his family and is usually with a calm elder-ish bachelor but this evening was having fun (between peaceful-grazing energy-restoration periods) creating havoc among a few other widespread bands.
Storm at right heading back to his band after leaving a deposit on a stud pile on the road (where I am … really needing to leave as dark approaches but unwilling to leave the gorgeousity).
Other than sharpening, this pic is exactly as it came out of my phone’s most-excellent camera (how DID we survive without cameras in our phones that we can take to the wildest places on Earth?! I won’t be without my camera-cameras … but I do love my phone’s camera for the wide, wild shots). Nerd info: The other pix also had some shadow-lightening applied (with sharpening) to better see the horses in the foreground, but that’s it. WHO NEEDS AI when you have this kind of light happening right in front of you????
It’s straight-up magic, folks. Ma Nature is kind of a genius. 🙂 All I do is point and click. And share. 🙂
We didn’t get rain out of either of those storms … but we got *divine* and very fabulous rain Sunday morning!
(Thanks to Harry Potter for this post’s title/quote!)
Hold onto your paddles, folks, have I got some rainwater for you. 🙂
Brought to you courtesy of Mother Nature –> Southwest Colorado –> Disappointment Valley –> Spring Creek Basin:
A full water-catchment trough is always a good sign. Fortunately, though low (in the tank, uphill behind me), we’ve had enough rain lately to keep this trough full – and there have been a fair number of horses drinking here with the amazing grass around (don’t let the pic fool you; the galleta, in particular, is bonkers this year, along with the alkali sacaton). I may have explained this in the past, but it bears repeating: The triangular sheet of metal over the trough is an evaporation cover, designed to help slow evaporation of precious water in our (usually) dry climate. The shape of the cover is triangular so the horses have plenty of room to drink at the sides of the round trough.
The Flat Top pond looks small in this wide-angle view looking eastish across Spring Creek Basin, but although it has gotten pretty shallow in recent years, it’s a pretty good size.
Good thing I scouted the V-arroyo before I tried to cross it. Those are my tentative footprints in the pillowy, shoe-grabbing – and tire-stopping – mud in the center bottom of the pic. You might not think it’s too bad, but there’s a lot of water in/under that surface mud still, and it is NOT friendly to tires or shoes until it has a chance to seep deeper into the soil and dry out from the bottom up. Along the left side of the pic is the arroyo – we’re looking upstream. The bottom of the arroyo, where I’m standing on relatively firm ground, isn’t very wide (hence my name of the “V”-arroyo), and the road rises to my left – up a little water-carved bank that’s nothing like the wall still in place on the other side of the first Spring Creek crossing.
Holy Spring, err, RIVER! I know it’s hard to tell, but this is the first crossing of the usually-dry arroyo that is Spring Creek (when it’s not masquerading as a rainwater-swollen river). Yes, the other side is a road. 🙂 Well, it’s mostly a two-tiered wall; the right side of it is where I dug a channel in the wall the last time the creek ran (back in June) so I could get my ATV across and up and over. It has been widened by crazy people in a truck (I don’t know who … I don’t know anyone that silly/stupid/nutso), but it’s greatly eroded again and is going to need some custom shovel work. (And lowering of the water level. :)) The width here is probably about 25 yards? (Good darting distance.) And this water level is at least 4-5 feet below where it was at its highest/widest mark, behind me, so it’s already running with less volume than at its peak. (WoW!)
I took a lot of pix from here, and I wish I knew how to embed video; I’m still on a super-high from seeing all that water. Bear with me as I show you some upstream and downstream and high-vantage pix. (If you don’t think water in the desert is A BIG DEAL, you don’t live in a desert.)
Looking downstream. Note the two-tiered wall across the creek where the road is (should be). Most of the rocks at left are from previous flooding. But I will tell you, that kind of water can move BIG rocks. I have seen it, and I have moved big (enough) rocks out of the way of crossing in a vehicle or ATV. This is why the powers that be warn people against crossing flooded roads; that water literally grooves arroyos into our salt-desert landscape (milennia ago, this was under a giant ocean!).
Arroyo as defined by Merriam Webster: plural arroyos. 1. : a waterway (as a creek) in a dry region. 2. : an often dry gully or channel carved by water.). … Arroyos are a desert’s proof of water movement – that far bank/wall is much taller than I am. The wall where the road used to be is proof that they’re always changing – with more water.
Looking upstream. Note the water at far right; it was still finding ways to trickle along downstream.
A bit wider view from back up the road a bit. I mean … ?! 🙂 I knew, before ever I got there, that I wouldn’t be able to cross, but I did NOT know how river-esque Spring Creek would be. I love, love, love this place.
Similar view, but this shows the bend in the creek at right. … Try to follow me upstream: See McKenna Peak (the pyramid-shaped pointy peak)? Way back there is the source/start of Spring Creek, which – as you all know, being loyal, wonderful readers of this blog – drains Spring Creek BASIN (along with all its multitude of widely (and narrowly) and wildly variable tributary arroyos). As you may or may not know, the creek doesn’t roll in a straight line from there to here (or beyond/behind/downstream of me). So that bend goes around to the left – upstream of the southernmost *major* drainage/arroyo in the basin – and past another creek/arroyo crossing (below the dugout, if you’ve visited). It comes from the eastish side of the basin – with the northernmost *major* drainage/arroyo entering from the northish to also run back to (really from) the northeast. Are you still with me? There are three *major* drainages in Spring Creek Basin with Spring Creek being the lowest, middle drainage – named as the very-most-major drainage and namesake of the basin it drains.
Water is important here. Knowing how it flows is part of the importance. Back in the very-long-ago day, some other silly people – who apparently didn’t know about arroyos and the highly-erodable quality of the salt-desert soil – tried to dam Spring Creek just below the confluence of the third major arroyo. Thinking they would create a reservoir out of which to irrigate land for farming (what WERE they thinking?), they built a dam and dredged miles of irrigation ditch; the remains of both can still be seen. As the story goes, the first major rain of the (likely monsoon?) season brought water rolling like a river down every tiny arroyo, down to and through the big drainages, blasted a hole in the dam that likely had cost boatloads of blood and sweat and resulted in tears (!) … and they went away *disappointed* (har har). … Mother Nature always wins, folks.
Well, I knew better than to attempt the crossing of Spring Creek Basin’s *river* (without more rain … which we’re getting again as I type … the creek would likely be done flowing within 24 hours … though the water will last in pockets and seeps for a good long while), so despite the big group of a couple of bands of mustangs not far away, I headed out, already on a great big, marvelous high.
What you’re looking at in the pic above is our crazy-good grass, which amazes me because of the little – but always valuable – rain we’ve gotten this summer (this year, really; it’s been pretty darn dry since *last* year). The galleta grass is particularly bonkers this year, along with the sand dropseed and/or alkali sacaton (very similar in appearance). This is from right inside the basin’s main/western boundary entrance looking eastish.
From here, my next destination was the south rim of Spring Creek canyon, through which water runs out of Spring Creek Basin, out across lower Disappointment Valley and into Disappointment Creek, which delivers water – along with a “healthy” (aka large) dose of salt and sediment (apologies) – to the grand and spectacular Dolores River.
Spring Creek, draining Spring Creek Basin. 🙂 Around the near (left) bend, before the far bend, there’s a fence across the wide-open low ground and a water gap across the creek; that’s the basin’s western boundary. Way yonder, on the horizon, on the far side of the farthest rimrock and even beyond that blue-grey tide of rain, is the south shoulder of eastern Utah’s La Sal Mountains.
Not even my phone’s widest angle is wide enough to take in all the gorgeousity of Spring Creek through its canyon, so here’s another bit of view that takes in more of the upstream canyon area. Spring Creek Basin stretches north (straight ahead of me) and east (to my right) and south (behind me) from this perspective on the canyon’s south rim.
Those layers. The canyon is neither super deep nor particularly long. But it is so gorgeous.
In just the short time I walked out and spent along the rim, the storm to the west was already passing.
Looking upstream across the heart of Spring Creek Basin, where another storm loomed on the northeastern/eastern/southeastern horizon.
And because this is a blog about the wild horses of Spring Creek Basin, there IS a mustang out there, though I’m not sure he’s visible. As far as I know, the young mister is the only one to have crossed the creek (within view, anyway). 🙂
Grow, grass, grow!
Better late than never (this was the last day of specific rain in the forecast). I think we can be said to have gotten some monsoon rains this summer. Despite all the worry leading to this day (yesterday), soooo amazingly grateful. 🙂
* Thanks to Charley Pride for the inspiration behind this post’s title – “(High on a) Mountain of Love.”
I mean, wow, right? Does anyone doubt this latest proof of magic in Disappointment Valley (or on planet Earth?)? 🙂 That was absolutely as wide as my cell-phone camera could go; the rainbow was (seemed to be) right above me.
As usual, the rain forming the prism of the rainbows fell in the atmosphere, but not much actually made it to Earth.
And after sunset, this was the storm to the southeast. Only in a video clip was I able to catch the lightning bolts. Time between first and third photo: about an hour and 15 minutes. (And that rain didn’t make it to my location, either. I’m not greedy, but it’s still annoying to have rain *that close*! :))
The water trough at the main/original water catchment is full again. The tank has about 3 feet of water. It has been mostly dry with a poor winter and without much rain.
Post-rain grass growth! If you live east of the Rockies and in places where it, you know, rains, this might look sparse. … To us, it looks lush and divine! And I will tell you, the mustangs are going after it with gusto!
Do you see the pillar of light? The clouds were heavy the last part of the day (and they and the breeze dropped the mercury comfortably), but then, at THE very end of the day, the sun found a window, and it lit up the basin.
Did you think I was exaggerating? 🙂 As usual, the pic doesn’t do justice to the colors of reality.
I couldn’t decide between the really long, wide view or the slightly zoomed-in view, so you get both. 🙂
Just another glorious day in Spring Creek Basin. I promise, pix of ponies are on the way.
This targeted downpour over southeastern Spring Creek Basin and upper-ish Disappointment Valley was by no means the only rain we got in the last couple of days. And it probably wasn’t even the most dramatic. But it sure was cool. 🙂
Depending on the part of the valley, we got anywhere from half an inch to probably at least an inch of rain between Thursday afternoon and Friday evening. Every drop is so very welcome.
According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac (linked above), “In the Northern Hemisphere, the June solstice (aka summer solstice) occurs when the Sun travels along its northernmost path in the sky. This marks the astronomical start of summer in the northern half of the globe. (In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the opposite: the June solstice marks the astronomical start of winter when the Sun is at its lowest point in the sky.)
“This solstice marks the official beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, occurring when Earth arrives at the point in its orbit where the North Pole is at its maximum tilt (about 23.5 degrees) toward the Sun, resulting in the longest day and shortest night of the calendar year. (By longest “day,” we mean the longest period of sunlight hours.) On the day of the June solstice, the Northern Hemisphere receives sunlight at the most direct angle of the year.”
The pic of the nearly-full moon rising over Spring Creek Basin landmarks McKenna Peak, Temple Butte, submarine ridge and Brumley Point was taken last night.
What is THAT crazy little alien-looking bee on these prickly pear cacti? There were two of them, and they were busily busy in the depths of these lovely blooms along a road in the basin.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 