Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

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!).

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.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Wherever you are, whomever you’re with, I wish you love and gratitude today, especially, of all days.

I am so grateful for my family, for giving me the love of horses and each other. Your support is a gift every day that I cherish wholeheartedly.

I am amazingly grateful for Spring Creek Basin and its beautiful mustangs, who lift and fill my heart every day.

I am blessedly grateful for my friends, many of whom I’ve made on this mustang journey – but not all.

I am very grateful for you readers of this blog, that joy and love of the natural world and these wild horses and places has brought you here.

Be well, and here’s to another year of gratitude and love for the goodness that surrounds us!