Aka Maia. 🙂
Wow. That’s some serious mud immersion! She and her band weren’t far from a pond that still has good water. Hopefully we have some rain coming this weekend. It is dry, dry, dusty dry.
In good news: Today is the last day of third rifle season.
From Spring Creek Basin’s “north hills,” the views are tremendous:
Do you see the mustangs? Admittedly, they’re a long way away. 🙂 (Look between the tallest fingers of the dead tree in the foreground.)
I. LOVE. THAT. VIEW!
And in the right light, it’s more painting than reality … except that the very best thing is that it IS reality! I realize that the above three pix are very similar; I couldn’t decide among them to pick just one. 🙂
From nearly the same vantage point, looking in the other direction, off the top:
Wild country. Available to the mustangs, but I’ve never seen any down/back there … of course, it would be a lucky combination to be in the right place at the right time (both/all of us!).
A little Spring Creek Basin potpourri for today’s post. The inspiration was this little guy/gal:
S/he was little bitty, and my first thought was the usual “chipmunk,” maybe “ground squirrel.” There were a couple of little holes, the nearest right behind the critter. While researching just what s/he IS for this blog post, I realized that I don’t give these ubiquitous little busybodies much thought, though I see them all the time. I looked up the above terms and compared those pix with my pix … nope, definitely not either. Then I spotted a pic of an “antelope squirrel,” which fit the bill. Who knew?! There are several regional kinds, and I don’t know which particular species this little one is, but s/he was awfully adorable and fairly curious about the giant (how must we seem to such tiny creatures?) with the clicking box.
From the very top of the western boundary of Spring Creek Basin – the rimrocks you see as you approach the basin’s western boundary *from* the west – this is a view looking to the northwest out over Disappointment Valley:
Utah’s La Sal Mountains are those peaks on the horizon. This was taken right from the fence line at a little saddle. In most places, the sheer cliffs of the band of rimrocks form a natural boundary for the basin. In other places, where the horses could wander right on over, there’s fencing to keep them home and safe. In the very foreground, you can see some old wire from a previous fence; I’m standing right at the current fence (not seen). Between Spring Creek canyon (down to my left) – which is the drainage outflow of Spring Creek Basin – and what I call the northwest valley (simply the farthest little “valley” in the northwestern part of the basin, where our newest water catchment is located; up to my right), there are a series of what I call “bowls” – little “micro-valleys” between hills/ridges, for lack of a better term. The above pic was taken from the top of one of those bowls.
Now facing the exact opposite direction, looking back into Spring Creek Basin, a little lower, near where I made my little friend:
This wonderful sculpture of an old juniper just begged to be used as a frame for this view of the basin, looking southeast. Note the grey mustang at lower right; she was grazing with her band and two others just below the height of the bowl. Visible across the background are landmarks often to irregularly featured in other images posted on the blog: Temple Butte above McKenna Peak (framed right through the upper part of the old tree), submarine ridge, Brumley Point (just right of the farthest top-right branch), Round Top and Flat Top. The snaking shadow-line at mid-right, above the mustang, is a low ridge along the south bank of Spring Creek. The canyon is downstream, farther right and out of this frame.
Would you like to see a bit closer look?
Of course! A marvelous view and a marvelous old grandfather (mother?) tree – what a view it has (imagine!!)!
Have I mentioned lately the fantabulous grass in the basin? Those ponies are eating like bears in hyperphagia (I’m only partially kidding). It’s pretty glorious – and incredibly satisfying to just hang out listening to the horses snip and crop and chew.
I’d been delighted by the ponies, charmed by the antelope squirrel, filled with gratitude by the bounty of grass (native grama, galleta, sand dropseed and alkali sacaton, if you want to know specifics (links may or may not be to the *specific* types that we have)), but the evening had more thrills in store. I’d noticed that the attention of a couple of horses was caught by something I couldn’t see, but as that happens quite a lot, and I was *focused* on framing the basin in the arms (branches) of the ancient juniper, it was a moment or three before another captivating face caught my eye:
One face but two somethings!
Now here’s a thing: Antelope squirrels may be called antelope squirrels (one wonders why?), but pronghorns are not actually antelope, despite the fact that they’re called antelope by most people. Kinda like the buffalo/bison thing. In any case, I didn’t know at the time about “antelope squirrels,” but I was thrilled to see these pronghorn buddies. I think they’re both young bucks, but females also have horns, which are smaller than the males’, and these weren’t super big. (I have seen females recently, with fawns.) Another interesting tidbit: Pronghorns aren’t hunted in most of Colorado. Despite being just about everywhere in states such as Wyoming (nickname: speed goats, which always tickles me), they’re not common in Colorado, especially this area of Colorado. We do have a fairly stable – and fairly small, 25-30ish animals? purely local observation – population in Disappointment Valley/Spring Creek Basin.
One …
… the other.
Thank goodness for long lenses and the quiet of inattention!
The curious stares lasted a few moments, then with a burst of speed too fast for this human to follow (with a camera …!), the boys put on a burst of their famous speed up the hill past a couple of unbothered mustangs (!).
Pronghorns could give humans lessons in sprints and interval training. As fast as they can hustle, they come to a walk or even stop just as quickly. All the better to check you out again, my dears. … Note the four o’clock blooming in the sunlight in the background. Most of the four o’clock plants/flowers are not currently blooming.
And they usually just as quickly lose interest in such slowsters as humans and mustangs. (Note the wonderfully healthy juniper trees branching over the buck and in the background. We’re losing a lot of trees to drought and teeny beetle-bugs.)
No trek above Spring Creek and the canyon would be complete without taking note of Spring Creek itself, which is trickling in places …
… and not a glimpse of water immediately downstream of the above pic. The creek makes a sharp bend to the left there and enters the canyon, just out of frame to the left.
We have an interesting phenomenon (is it a phenomenon when/where it’s normal?) here where water will run above ground (in the creek/arroyo bed), then disappear underground, then reappear (sometimes, in some places) above ground, in the creek/arroyo bed, downstream. With the geology and stone stratigraphy of Spring Creek canyon, there almost always are some little pools of water between the walls of the canyon itself. (A reminder: Spring Creek and its tributary arroyos drain Spring Creek Basin. That water then flows out of the basin, across part of lower Disappointment Valley and joins Disappointment Creek, which eventually empties into the spectacular Dolores River. Spring Creek is ephemeral; it runs only when we get a big (or sometimes not-even-so-big) rain event. This water is from the big rain(s) we got about a week ago, making its way downstream.)
And I’ll leave you all with the glorious panorama that is Spring Creek Basin, from the northwest looking east/southeast/south:
So very much to see – and love. 🙂
Speaking of tenacious (Skywalker, yesterday), Tenaz knows what it takes to keep his band together against all comers.
Didn’t I say it was super cool?
The almost-supermoon (technically rising today, Aug. 1) would have risen slightly out of frame to the left; you can see how there was no way it was going to be visible through that heavy rain-cloud layer.
There never was a fully-arched rainbow, and the intensity varied depending on sunshine/clouds from the west (the above is looking southeast), but it wasn’t till late in the show when the faint second arc appeared.
The lesson is clear: Mustangs are always the gold. 🙂
The upper atmosphere is trying to gear up to potentially, eventually, maybe – at some point – give us some rain. Soon (we hope).
The evening was punctuated with a few small, very faint rainbows, catching some elusive liquid suspended in the air. The above – do you see it? – was not only the biggest I saw, it was the first of the evening.
Long-maned Sundance, napping, which is to say, perhaps, waiting impatiently for the sun to set, relieving us all with a bit of … if not coolness, at least a cessation of boiling heat. The background was so gorgeously beautiful, but I had to use my phone (as opposed to my camera with its long lens) for the wide view.
Post-sunset in Spring Creek Basin’s wildcat valley, bands were peacefully grazing while rain fell (or seemed to fall) over the Glade to the south.
And as I left them to their evening repast, I found this guy:
Hollywood alone, within sight of the horses in the image above.
Just another low-key evening in Spring Creek Basin. 🙂 The moon is about half-full. Who’s ready for the full, super sturgeon moon?!
For the last very long – days and days and days and weeks and days and weeks – we’ve had solid blue skies. Every. Single. Day.
We finally got some clouds. And when Disappointment Valley does clouds, boy, does it do spectacular clouds.
In order of appearance from around 5:30 or close to 6 p.m. to after sunset:
Looking west.
Mustangs grazing and napping under the relief of clouds.
Silver linings.
Do you see the rainbow?
Rain – or at least virga – to the west.
More mustangs. More napping.
When I left the bands pictured above, I thought I might have a chance at any late surprise light with the bands pictured higher above. But they had moved quite a bit, and the clouds were heavy, and sunset was imminent. But as I left Spring Creek Basin, rain was drifting eastish along the southern ridges of Disappointment Valley. Then I dropped below the rimrocks (the basin’s western boundary), and holy rainbow! You’ll have to take my word for it that it was SUPER intense, and the photo above doesn’t do it justice.
By the time I got to the main road, that “surprise” light was glowing, and the rain had moved away from the southern ridges.
Meanwhile, to the west … this!
Bit closer view of the mountains.
Back to the southeastish, rain was actually falling over the southern/southeastern part of Spring Creek Basin.
And THIS happened. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so glad and grateful to have a cell phone that doubles as a very wide-angle camera.
We ended the day with some post-sunset magic.
And 0.01 inch of rain. 🙂 Enough to make part of the road … actually … WET!
Looking back helps us look forward (*when* it helps? sometimes I think looking forward is the only way to go … though I’m not very good at this myself). I think this is the third year of the (admittedly borrowed, in my case) tradition of posting 12 pix at the end of the year that represent each of the previous months. It has been a good year in Spring Creek Basin. After another less-than-positive winter and a dry spring, we had a second-in-a-row summer monsoon season and a relatively rainy early fall. Then things got dry again before we finally started to get snow a couple of weeks before Christmas.
Our excellent BLM partners – Mike Jensen, Garth Nelson and Daniel Chavez – put their enviable skills to work and built a second water catchment in the basin, starting in early summer and finishing in the fall. It’s another (our fourth) such project to catch and store liquid gold and bank it against continuing drought conditions; with the newest catchment, we have the storage capacity for 50,500 gallons of water. That’s really quite enormous (!). (Of course, we need Mother Nature’s continuing help in the form of snow and rain!)
We lost some horses (as we do every year), and we had some foals (as we do every year), and the herd and the range are in excellent and very good condition overall. In September, we celebrated our 11th anniversary since the last roundup. Fertility-control treatments continue apace, and because of the efficacy of the native PZP that we use, and the aforementioned good condition of horses and range, there’s (thankfully) nothing (no removals) on the horizon.
Without further ado, as 2022 comes to an end, let’s remember some scenes of Spring Creek Basin and its fabulous mustangs to carry us ahead into 2023 (some have been previously published here; others are new to the blog):
Tenaz (showing off his rarely-seen generous star with wind whipping aside his forelock) and the mustangs rang in the first day of 2022 with fresh snow! A handsome bay mustang does look rich and supremely healthy in new snow. I know I write that a lot with regard to bay mustangs, but really, have you ever seen a better color combination!? OK, OK … all of the other equine colors look pretty fabulous, too. 🙂
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Even baby horses like Lluvia love to catch fluttering snowflakes on their lips! They do make me laugh, these ponies (see yesterday’s post about laughing with friends!). 🙂 With their thick, insulating coats, mustangs are well adapted to winters in high desert areas such as Spring Creek Basin. Our winters are fairly mild, though we do have some frigid days … and snow!
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Dundee, Rowan and Aiyanna came from Sand Wash Basin in September 2021 and were welcomed here with monsoon-grown grasses. They filled out nicely that fall, but by March, they were a bit on the lean side. I think that had to do with their youth: Dundee was 2, and Rowan and Aiyanna were yearlings – all three still growing. They all blossomed throughout this year, as you’ve seen from recent pix of the girls. On this particular evening, they were high on a ridge on the west side of Filly Peak when another band appeared below, sending them into a gallop that I was thrilled to “capture” in that glorious golden light!
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We may not have gotten much snow last winter and not much rain in the spring, but because of the previous summer’s monsoon rains – which, after a period of tense waiting, filled all the ponds – we came through winter and into spring with full ponds, which meant fantastic water in April. One of the greatest joys of watching mustangs is seeing them splash and play in water in nearly-belly-deep ponds – and then drink long, thirst-quenching draughts. Again, these ponies do make me laugh!
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Corazon works his classic mustang-silhouette-at-sunset pose. He has really come into his own as a steady band stallion these last few years, and his son and daughter adore him. His son, in particular, is a mini-me who inherited both his black-and-white coat and his flank heart. Though Corazon’s namesake heart isn’t visible in this image, I think it’s one that does cause one’s heart to soar, just to see a mustang free in the wild, the glowing horizons fading into infinity.
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You’d never know it to look at them, but these sprightly creatures are sisters! Their mama was lovely Tesora, whom we sadly lost in February. She lives on in their spirit and beauty. Lluvia sticks close to big sister TaylorK, whom she knows more as an auntie. Family is – always – everything. (As they run, do you see the soaring bird in the pattern on Lluvia’s shoulder? She has another on her right shoulder.)
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With green all around him as the summer days advanced through July, Sundance made clear to another stallion, who was a bit closer than Sundance thought was appropriate, that his proximity was NOT appropriate. He does look rather intimidating, doesn’t he? Sundance is one of the most laid-back stallions out there (and really, they’re all fairly easy going, most of the time), and he’s also very protective – just like all of them. All it usually takes is a bit of posturing, sometimes some sniffing and nudging and squealing, and points are made! Successful conversation … without a word spoken.
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Speaking of proximity issues … ! These two boys are former longtime BFFs, with the sorrel previously the lieutenant of the grey. But then those roles reversed, and sorrel Braveheart wasn’t so generous as to allow Pitch to be HIS lieutenant. The more things change … eh?! Our bands are generally very stable, but the horses are wild, after all, and young stallions do grow up and seek families of their own – as do the fillies.
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Stepdaddy Braveheart is quite proud of and protective of his family of Winona and Reuben. (Remember that amazing grass this fall after the monsoon rains?!) This was a beautiful, warm evening when a few bands had gathered together (but not *too* close together), and I moseyed along with them as they grazed and moved from the northwest valley toward Spring Creek canyon. When the little threesome paused in the most photogenic spot possible, with iconic McKenna Peak and Temple Butte in the background, I couldn’t press the shutter fast or long enough! This is the photo I gave Connie Clementson upon her retirement as manager of Tres Rios Field Office in Dolores.
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In October, BLM wildland firefighters along with some Forest Service (San Juan National Forest) partners from around the region (including a crew from Monticello, Utah (Manti-La Sal National Forest)), conducted a prescribed burn to help maintain wildlife habitat on the ridge south of Spring Creek Basin that forms part of the southern reach of Disappointment Valley. Because of the moisture we had earlier in the summer, the three-day burn moved slowly and was well monitored by at least 30 firefighters. I don’t know what the total acreage was, but it wasn’t a huge area, and it mainly consisted of burning piles of old, fallen pinon and juniper trees so grasses can grow. To clarify, the burn was NOT in the basin. But the slowly drifting smoke – which was visible from the basin but didn’t blow over the basin – made for some dramatic scenes. As I remember, it rained a couple of days after the end of the burning, and our sky returned to its usual clear turquoise.
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Napping with pals is just about the best, most peaceful way to spend a lovely fall day in November. There were two bands and a group of young bachelors in fairly close proximity to each other when I hiked out to visit with them all, and it was such a soft, quiet, gentle evening among friends. The horses draw such comfort from each other … and I gain such amazing comfort from them. On these days, especially, I wish such peace was something that could be bottled and shot into space to rain down on people and places less fortunate than us.
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In early December, we were still pretty dry in the basin, but we had this little cherub to brighten the days. 🙂 She’s a classic example of grey foals being born a color (sorrel, bay, black, etc. – my family even has a grey Quarter Horse mare that was born palomino) and *greying out* – though our grey foals don’t often grey out as fast as this little girl. Mama Echo was born black. I think I’ve mentioned before that grey is the dominant color among the mustangs of Spring Creek Basin. In that way, too, these two are classics. 🙂
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As in years past, how about a bonus pic?
Winona and her son Reuben and one of the many amazing views from Spring Creek Basin, looking out across far lower Disappointment Valley to Utah’s La Sal Mountains, snowclad once again from fall onward. If that scene doesn’t scream (ever so quietly, of course) *peace*, I’m not sure what could. Their band and a couple of others had gathered at a pond, and they were walking away. I was trying to anticipate horses walking *across* that view, but mostly, they were lined straight out away from me as they left the water to return to their evening grazing. When I saw Winona – with confident baby Reuben leading the way – I was somewhat disappointed that they were so far away. … Then I realized that, to capture *that* view, my long lens needed the space of distance. Truly, sometimes it really *does* all come together!
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Thank you all for reading about and enjoying our Spring Creek Basin mustangs this year. Many special thanks to those of you who faithfully come up with comments every day (sometimes, it must be nearly as hard as it is to come up with blog-post titles)!
Here’s to a coming year with plenty of moisture (!), and full ponds and catchments, and forage that grows ’em up strong and healthy. To take to heart a lesson from the mustangs and other wildlife: Be present in the moment! Some times (sometimes? many times?), that’s ever so much better than looking back or worrying about what’s ahead. 🙂
Happy New Year’s Eve!
Yes, Virginia, it really is that gorgeous.
At least somebody’s getting rain. 🙂 Our forecast perks up with moisture in another couple of days, but we wouldn’t mind it sooner than later. Cooler temps ARE much appreciated.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 