12 from 2024

14 02 2025

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.)


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Categories : Advocacy, Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Education, La Sal Mountains, McKenna Peak, Mustangs, Snow, Spring Creek, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Spring Creek canyon, Temple Butte, Water

No snow yet

5 02 2025

A little bit of a throwback, as the recent wind (for the last few days?!) was reminding me of the day the wind brought snow. No snow since then, but Seneca always looks beautiful waiting for it!

Looking south, that’s snow coming over the southern ridges of Disappointment Valley.

Seneca was named by me, but it was a name Pati Temple liked and wanted to use as a foal name. She was from New York state, and “the Seneca were the largest of six Native American nations which comprised the Iroquois Confederacy or Six Nations, a democratic government that pre-dates the United States Constitution. The historical Seneca occupied territory throughout the Finger Lakes area in Central New York, and in the Genesee Valley in Western New York, living in longhouses on the riversides.“


Comments : 8 Comments »

Categories : Disappointment Valley, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs

Bald is beautiful

2 02 2025

Switching gears – and hair for feathers – this morning, please enjoy this juvenile bald eagle that was hanging out in some cottonwood trees near (dry) Disappointment Creek.

S/he looks like s/he dipped her/his head in some of the seeps that are producing mud-water currently, but based on this illustration, I believe s/he’s a juvenile, about 4 years old.

There were no other birds around – eagles or otherwise. I was incredibly happy that the eagle was “sticky” and allowed me a few minutes to photograph him/her from my truck.

You may not have known (I didn’t!), but before Christmas Eve, the bald eagle, while a definitive symbol of the United States of America, was not, in fact, its national bird. “On Christmas Eve, President Biden signed the legislation declaring the bald eagle the official national bird.”

We don’t have a lot of bald eagles in Disappointment Valley anymore, though I’ve been seeing them all winter between Disappointment and Dry Creek Basin (on the way to Naturita and/or Norwood). (And I’ve kicked myself a million times for not having my camera those times … though it’s harder to stop in the middle of the highway than on lonely Disappointment Road!) A generation or so ago, there must have been many, as evidenced by the title of “Where Eagles Winter: History and Legend of the Disappointment Country” by Wilma Crisp Bankston, the late mother of an up-valley resident (whose brother and sister also still own land nearby).

While we have golden eagles year ’round in the Disappointment Country, bald eagles are mostly winter visitors. It’s always a treat to see any of these magnificent birds.


Comments : 19 Comments »

Categories : Cottonwood trees, Disappointment Creek, Disappointment Valley, Eagle

Arrival of the front

19 01 2025

The cold front announced its arrival in Disappointment Valley yesterday morning with wind and dramatic skies. Utah’s La Sal Mountains were blocked from sight by a snow squall in/over western Disappointment Valley most of the afternoon.

I drove into Spring Creek Basin briefly, just in time to see a little snow squall rolling from north to south across the eastern ridges of the basin. In contrast to the other day, when the snow blazed a trail across the basin, yesterday, the snow was all around but never atop us.

Horses were visible in the distance, but I decided that this would be more of a scenery day.

On my way out of the basin, I happened upon the group of about 15 pronghorns that have been hanging around together lately. By the time I saw them, stopped, got the camera out of my pack and aimed, at least half of them had dropped off their little ridge.

Away out yonder in those breaks and canyons is the Dolores River.

From back on the Disappointment Road, another isolated little squall was dropping snow along Horse Park, a narrow little valley between Spring Creek Basin and beyond. You can recognize part of the far ridge as the same one in the background of the Maiku pic a couple of posts ago. The rimrocks at the bottom, semi-foreground are the western boundary of Spring Creek Basin.

And just a little south of the previous pic, the squall was still moving south over Temple Butte. In the near foreground are cottonwoods and tamarisk along Disappointment Creek.

This is yet farther south (from my vantage point, I’m looking sort of southeast-ish). While I was trying to get the snow over the very far (and much higher elevation) ridges, a golden eagle was flying over the scene. See it above the cottonwood at left?

We’ll close with another, tighter view across Disappointment Creek and Spring Creek Basin. You can see the basin’s western rimrocks, Flat Top, Round Top, submarine ridge, McKenna Peak and Temple Butte – snow beyond.

Gosh, I love this place. 🙂

Wherever you are, I hope you’re warm these next few days!


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : Disappointment Creek, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Pronghorn, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte

On the first

1 01 2025

(Remember what I said about not enough days? Not enough hours, too/either, and too many other things to do that don’t involve computers and the insides of walls. Apologies for the delay to the day – and the year (if only, eh?)!)

How about some inter-species getting-alongness to kick off the first day of the new year?

Dundee and the band were making their way westward along the base of a little hill/ridge when they encountered the pronghorns. The pronghorns (one of them, at least) gave a couple of little “barks” at one point (their warning sound), and I think that was because at least one of them finally realized there was something “not like the others” wandering along in the horses’ wake.

The main road into the basin is just down to the right, and the pronghorns eventually crossed it and continued to watch the horses, who stopped to graze where the ground leveled out a bit above the road.

It is anthropomorphic in the extreme to say that pronghorns LIKE to race and be raced (it’s that speed thing). … But if you’ve ever driven in pronghorn country, you know what I’m sayin’. And so, when they realized (!) that the horses had no intention whatever of racing anywhere, the pronghorns eventually moseyed (as much as pronghorns can be said to mosey) on to the high ground to the north, toward Spring Creek canyon, and out of sight.

No fuss, no muss, no warfare.

I won’t say there was a lot of conversation, either (aside from the brief warning – “hey, there’s a two-legged!”), but I’m sure no offense was either given or taken. Let’s all be so kind this year.

Happy, happy. 🙂

And a couple of bonus shots, for having to wait so long for today’s post:

From last night, driving through Norwood, Colorado:

Pretty spectacular for a little town! (But also, there was a lot of kabooming, which can’t have been peaceful for the four-leggeds.)

And this morning, first sunrise of 2025:

Pretty in pink. Alas, we have zero moisture in the immediate forecast.


Comments : 11 Comments »

Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs

The waiting

15 12 2024

Snow incoming, but it never quite reached us – Buckeye’s band.


Comments : 6 Comments »

Categories : Disappointment Valley, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs

Buff and blendy

12 12 2024

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!


Comments : 10 Comments »

Categories : Disappointment Valley, Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wildlife

Can’t-be-contained bonus

27 11 2024

When I was a young Coloradan, newly moved to Durango from Texas, my then-co-workers at The Durango Herald can attest to the fact that the first time snow fell that winter, I went a little bonkers with excitement.

Not much has changed, 22-plus years later. 🙂

We had another great (rain to) snowfall overnight, and it was a wonderland of white this morning – and muddymuddymuddy underneath. The snow is nearly all melted – at least down-valley – now, but rather than wait for tomorrow, here’s a peek at the Thanksgiving-Eve bounty in Spring Creek Basin:

Shortly after sunrise, Chrome’s Point, looking south-southeastish. Flat Top and Round Top are at left in the distance, and Filly Peak is at right.

Looking back north-northwestish, the difference in light is dramatic (this was maybe only 10-15 minutes after the first pic?) as the clouds linger at the higher elevations south and east of Spring Creek Basin and have started clearing to the west and north (though the mountains were engulfed in clouds the whole time I was out).

Holy heavenly light. If I’d been able to see that spotlight of light, with my own eyeballs, at the time, I would have brought out the big gun (these are all from my phone – handy little pocket cam that it is). Wow. Knife Edge is ahead to the left; Brumley Point is visible at far right. Temple Butte and McKenna Peak are still completely within the clouds.

Round Top – aka Saucer (as in flying) Hill – with snow still pouring from the moisture-laden clouds to the southern ridges of Disappointment Valley and beyond to the Glade.

I was just below the base of Knife Edge with mustangs when Temple Butte and McKenna Peak were starting to emerge from the still-billowing clouds. Dramatic much?!?

Heading back to my buggy and the road, looking upstream at the Spring Creek arroyo toward its source at McKenna Peak … Temple Butte behind it … submarine ridge to the right … Brumley Point straight ahead (it sits right on the basin’s southeast boundary) … Round Top at far right. Water WAS trickling through the bed of the arroyo in some places (like where I crossed).

From the ridge at the main/original water catchment (oh, how I hope this snow provided lots and lots of water for our catchments!), looking eastish across the basin. I mean … who DOESN’T get giddy at the sight of snow?! 🙂 Knife Edge is the ridge at far left with the top rim just barely free of snow. See the trees at the base of the ridge at almost farthest left? That’s where the ponies are (the ones I visited, anyway).

This one’s a little out of order, but it sums it all up. 🙂 I love mustangs; I love snow; I love Spring Creek Basin and its mustangs in the snow!

That’s our water. Our moisture. Our lifeblood for growing things.

So, so, so, SOOOOO grateful this Thanksgiving Eve. Happy gratitude to all you wonderful readers and your families on this, my very favorite holiday. Hope you all get to spend it with those you love, in places you love. 🙂


Comments : 6 Comments »

Categories : Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Mustangs, Snow, Spring Creek, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Spring Creek canyon, Temple Butte, The Glade, Water

Peace in the valley – again

25 11 2024

Fourth rifle season ended a little past sunset last night – thank goodness. Every year, the human pressure increases. Where once it was horrible only during third season, now all the seasons have their pressures … from the first of September through late November. It’s exhausting for the animals (of which I’m only one two-legged critter).


Comments : 14 Comments »

Categories : Disappointment Valley, La Sal Mountains, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area

Morning delight

16 11 2024

Third rifle season finally is over in Colorado.

I think it’s not an understatement or anthropomorphism to say that I and the animals (of all species) are in a state of relief. Interestingly, I think the hordes were fewer this year, and while I think most were well-behaved (and I met and talked to a few very nice individual hunters – including a very friendly young man from Oregon), there was at least one instance (relayed to me by a hunter who witnessed it from quite a distance and up a ridge away) of shooting from the road (totally illegal), possibly after the 30-minutes-after-sunset rule, onto private property (which may or may not have been properly noted as such on their OnX map apps).

I witnessed at least two hunters leaving their camp well past 30 minutes after sunset to go … somewhere? And when starting to head out of the basin one night after sunset, from deep-east in the basin, was passed by two hunters going even DEEPER into the basin. Flouting the rules?! Draw your own conclusion.

The horses have been nervous to the rifle shots and accompanying echoes, which caused everything from startling in place to taking off running en masse.

Relief? Huge.

There’s still fourth season, which starts Wednesday and runs through Sunday (blessedly short), but we rarely get hunters during that season – and not the camping-here, driving-up-and-down-the-road-from-5:14 a.m.-to-well-after-dark (I lose track) hunters that third season is (in)famous for hosting.

Early Friday morning, I saw subtle color in the scudding clouds in the southeastern sky and decided to see what was happening (let alone keep an eye out for any nefariousness). … That subtle color had faded to grey by the time I got out on the road. … But then … starting with just a couple of bands of flame above the horizon … THE LIGHT EXPLODED.

And behind me to the west:

There was quite a lot of distortion as the moon sank – quite unlike the sharp views when it rises? – but take my word for the marvelousity (kinda like gorgeousity – all phenomenal!).

My big camera and long lens simply can’t take it all in, so I switched to my phone. In the foreground is Disappointment Road heading southeast. Visible in the distance are Temple Butte and Brumley Point.

Presented in the order in which they were taken. I know they all look similar … but the sky went from spectacular to SPECTACULAR, and show me a photographer who can *stop* taking pix of a such a scene (you can’t, and we certainly can’t).

Bear with me (because you know there’s more).

Continuing in order … looking a bit more to the east (left). I laid down in the middle of the road to take this one, something I’d never have done at the height of the hunting season.

Meanwhile, what was happening behind me, where the moon had already set?

More gorgeousity! Looking northwest to Utah’s La Sal Mountains.

Back to the southeast … starting to see a different color hue as the Earth continued its rotation and the sun edged closer to its morning debut.

Clouds and light and land to the southwest, where the moon set before the colors took off (darnit!).

One more of our beloved horizon mountains.

Apologies to sailors for swapping words to the usual rhyme. 🙂 (Not really.) It WAS very windy, which I imagine wouldn’t be so fun if you had to row against it or sail with it propelling you away from your destination. But wow. I hope many, many photography-minded and beauty-loving people stopped what they were doing and admired the sunrise yesterday.


Comments : 12 Comments »

Categories : Brumley Point, Colorado, Disappointment Valley, La Sal Mountains, McKenna Peak, Moon, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte

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