Tenaz may look surprised by the sudden snow blanketing his previously very brown world … but really, he was looking down the ridge at another stallion.
We got about an inch and a half of the good, white wet stuff before it all soaked into the ground, leaving it as brown as before … but nicely more damp. 🙂
Snow showers, not rain, but we’ll take every last drop of moisture Mother Nature offers!
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.)
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.“
This was toward the end of the 15 or 20 minutes I spent with Buckeye’s band while it snowed. There’s a fair bit of snow cover on the ground – and on the horses!
I thought the horses would likely turn their butts to the strong wind that was sending the snow straight at them broadside, but they grazed around as though it wasn’t windy at all. I kept *my* back to the wind and the snow because I didn’t want the flakes hitting my lens inside the lens hood and making it even harder for the camera to find focus on the horses (as opposed to the flakes in the air)… but the tradeoff was that the snow was hitting the eye piece of the camera, which meant I couldn’t see anything but watery blobs! So I was trusting that my camera’s focus beeps indicated that it really was finding focus on the horses and just sort of guessing at composition. Amazingly, it did a great job at finding focus on the horses through the air that was THICK with fat flakes blowing crazily past us. The wind and snow started out of the southeast, and by the time I left the horses, it had shifted a bit and was coming more from straight east.
The horses were getting pretty coated in snow by the time I left them – maybe 15 or 20 minutes after the snow reached us? – and I didn’t think about it until I was brushing myself off for the trip home, but I also was covered in snow. Ha! It’s like not noticing the biting cold when I’m with the ponies … but only later. Their magical bubble encompasses me and blocks out any adverse conditions (heat or cold, snow or sharp sunshine). 🙂 I’m completely sure that my presence doesn’t act in the reverse, for *them* … but I wish it did!
From bright blue skies to white-out blizzard! Mother Nature actually came through for us yesterday afternoon. 🙂
I was in about the center of Spring Creek Basin, and the snow was coming from the eastish/southeastish for probably two hours, and I was despairing of it ever getting really to us (“us” being a form of the royal we, meaning the horses – and me in their midst). At precisely 2:45 (I turned my phone on to look), the leading snowflakes started flying with the wind that had started pushing maybe 15 or so minutes earlier.
Fairly quickly, the ground went from dry and brown to showing kabillions of snowflakes to having collected so many individual snowflakes – blown by the horizontal wind! – that the ground was white. The horses were collecting nearly as much snow on their coats and their manes and forelocks and faces as the ground. It doesn’t show super well on pale Rowan, but I should have some more snow-pony pix over the next couple of days (by Monday, we’re supposed to be enjoying 60-plus-degree temps!).
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!
Snowy weather almost always brings out the snoozies in the wild ponies. When I took this pic of Madison and Temple napping, there was another napping-on-the-ground horse to the right and THREE others, all lying down, to the left. Two of those three were standing when I first approached, but they ended up lying down with the others, leaving only the lieutenant stallion standing-napping a fairly close distance away.
I’d walked out to them, then to another band a bit farther away, and I took this pic as I was headed back to the road. In the mud, it wasn’t as easy a hike as on dry ground. Why not join them? It was a good time and excuse to stretch out and take a nap among friends. 🙂
There’s not quite as much snow under-hoof as there appears to be in this image with Skywalker, still wet from recently falling snow. … But at this point, ANY little bit is needed and welcome.
When a wild pony poses, you generally have about 2.7 seconds to either take the shot or get into position to take the shot … or you don’t get the shot because wild ponies don’t generally hang about posing for paparazzi.
Flash did me a super solid and posed for probably at least 12.8 seconds before he moseyed on after his mares.
Plenty ‘o time. 🙂
That’s snow in the background, swirling and whirling with the wind between us and McKenna Peak and Temple Butte. It snowed in the morning, too, but other than the far eastern ridges of Spring Creek Basin, it left nothing behind. … And by the time I took this pic in the evening, most of what had stuck to those ridges was gone again.
Keep trying, Mother Nature. We need that moisture badly (and that makes me think of the terrible wildfires in California, where I read they’ve had just 0.16 inch of moisture since May … ouch. THAT is just astoundingly dry). Keep trying, Mother Nature. …
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 