Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

This is a pic that precedes Wednesday’s pic by 14 frames … and 31 seconds.

It was meant to follow the “Bewitched” post, which featured unusual lighting glowing over our handsome Sundance. … And then snow happened. 🙂

So here’s the rest of that story:

At the time I took these photos, I was in or at the edge of the shade, and Sundance was moseying on after his band, already within the shadow of Valentine Mesa. The perspective of the image is that I’m facing southeast-ish, with southwest to my right-ish. It was just after 7 p.m., and depending where you are in Spring Creek Basin or greater Disappointment Valley, the sun sets around 7:30 p.m.

As Sundance walked past, I pivoted to take pix … snapping several frames, one of which was the pic of Wednesday’s post, where the spotlight of divine light seems to be coming from above his left shoulder – or from the southeast. Which is wild and weird because the sun was setting basically in front of him!

🙂 Who can explain the beauty of magic??

(Note: I had no idea I’d captured Wednesday’s blog pic until I was looking through images on my computer a couple of days after I’d taken them.)

It was like this again yesterday.

Bad smoke. Maybe the worst. And apparently, it was coming from fires in Utah.

From the air-quality alert we’re under until 9 this morning (via the Weather Channel website):

IMPACTS…Areas of moderate to heavy smoke have been observed across central and western Colorado due to transported smoke from wildfires in northeastern Utah. Gusty winds and dry conditions at the Utah fires will result in high fire activity on Monday and continued periods of moderate to heavy smoke across central and western Colorado through at least Monday evening. Rain and snow moving into the area late Monday night will result in a significant decrease in smoke concentrations in central and northwestern Colorado by early Tuesday morning, with slower improvement expected for southwestern Colorado.

Uggy uggy yucky yucky.

Here’s hoping that the cooler weather and some moisture on its way disperses the smoke – and dampens any fires it also hopefully covers!

Storm is always the focus!

He was looking at my Jeep, parked on the road, across the flat, over the arroyo and up the hill. Not close … but different. It hadn’t been there previously, and nobody has eyes for *different* like a mustang. I think it’s funny that he wasn’t at all worried about me, standing a few yards away, but he was intent on making sure that little black buggy, close to half a mile away, wasn’t a danger to his family.

He and his band had found one of the three newly-watery ponds. They had apparently already watered when I found them and were grazing their way into the shade of the late afternoon.

You know it feels good when you can work a good head rub into your roll. 🙂

Beauty in the haze.

Big boy Skywalker relaxes while watching a nearby band.

The ground was damp when I took this pic of Kestrel last week while she snacked on some four-wing saltbush. It was quite, um, cool. 🙂

This was our view last night in Spring Creek Basin. Looks pretty parched, eh? It is. Those clouds to the east beyond McKenna Peak and Temple Butte didn’t prove very helpful in the moisture department.

The horses aren’t very far from Spring Creek canyon here, which has water in holes and pools. During my hikes around the basin, I keep an eye on the seeps and have seen them recharge with even the recent little rains, so that’s encouraging.

Skywalker, above, is quite relaxed, keeping his own eyes on the band down the hill. He and his bachelor buddy napped for quite a while before finally returning to grazing as the shadows started to creep their way from the rimrocks.