Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

While visiting with Hollywood’s band, exhausted by the snow and trying hard NOT to think about the return tramp to the road, I spotted a couple of other bands in the vicinity. In dry times, I wouldn’t have thought a thing about walking over to visit them, too, before heading back to the road. In dry times, the distances I hike might be daunting to someone who doesn’t regularly hike the distances I hike (!).

With a foot (?) of snow on the ground, lemme tell you: Half the distance seems to take three times as long to cover.

There was no way I was going visiting elsewhere that evening. 🙂

P.S. While walking a trail is noticeably easier than walking across sage- and shadscale- and greasewood-studded ground that often feels like shifting beach sand, retracing your snowshoe path isn’t much different than breaking trail – and I did both. It’s an effort. Of all things, it was my shoulders that hurt when I returned to the comforts of home, and I could barely lift a glass of tea. … But what a MARVELOUS hike through abundant snow with visions of full ponds and waving grass dancing in my head all the livelong way. 🙂

Almost no other color could glow with such warmth in a world so amazingly and blindingly white. And it is VERY white out here right now.

Even when we get snow, it so quickly melts that it’s rare to enjoy it for longer than a few hours after it falls. It was COLD yesterday morning (4 degrees Fahrenheit by my truck), and though we had periods of sunshine (first thing in the morning), clouds quickly obscured that glorious Colorado sky. That combination means that it’s still a very white world here in Disappointment Valley. 🙂 And the snow is deep – still.

The depth of the snow is obvious by that clinging to Hollywood’s knees and hocks. His face is wet to just below his cheeks from the foraging he’s doing in the snow to find the palatable bits of vegetation.

It’s RARE for us to have so much snow all at the same time. It’s COOL to have so much snow all at once.

Well, we wanted snow. 🙂 Depending on elevation and drifts, lower to mid-ish Disappointment Valley got between 7 inches and maybe close to 2 feet of snow between Saturday night and late morning Sunday.

Wow. 🙂

Erring on the side of caution, I didn’t venture too far into the basin, and with 2 feet of snow up-valley, I was worried about leaving my vehicle on the edge of the road and hiking in. I wandered all over the place, and I hiked around a wee hill we call Filly Peak, and I found just one band.

As one friend texted: “That’s great water.” Yes. Yes, it is! 🙂

As usual, I wasn’t sure what Kwana was looking at. Trees were to my left, and his girls were behind him, to my right. Whatever he was looking at, he sure was a handsome watcher. 🙂

Hopefully by the time this publishes, we’ll have gotten some much (again) needed rain and be looking at snow. If you’re getting snow and don’t necessarily want it (Texas, I’m looking at you), feel free to pass it along to the parched places!

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Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there! … Lovers of nature, of life, of the wild, of each other. LOVE!

How beautiful they are, Alegre and Maia.

Corazon couldn’t care less that he has a giant heart on his side. But that giant external heart covers a giant internal heart that makes him a fierce protector of his family.

Spirit gives new meaning to the word galoshes. 🙂 As in, “galoshes gee willickers, that’s a lotta mud!”

Piedra apparently has been playing in the mud recently, and that has tinged her nearly snow-white coat. Never a fashion diva, however, she looks as beautiful as ever with those wise and beautiful eyes.

What’s that feeling when you drive up the valley to see how muddy things are, find that they’re plenty muddy, still, decide that of COURSE you’re NOT going to hike out anywhere in the mud (again), unless you see horses, and you KNOW you won’t see horses because horses haven’t been visible from the road for WEEKS (months?), so you won’t have to go hiking through the mud … and then you see a bit of white that you think (you’re SURE) is (must be) salt on the wall of an arroyo … and you look closer, through the binoculars … and the salt-on-the-arroyo has a mane … ? That feeling? 🙂

So of course you take off hiking through mud that is very muddy, that accumulates on your boots and the hems of your pant legs. And, of course, you have the most wonderful visit with the horses within view of the road. And then, of course (because, of course!), a crazy backhoe comes wandering down the road because who doesn’t take a Saturday evening stroll down-valley in a backhoe? (If you know what I’m talking about, of course you know who I’m talking about.)

But that minor part was yet to come when I took the above pic of Chipeta among last season’s rabbitbrush (not actually reeds) where she looked so magical and lovely. The horses were mostly eating snow, and they’d also found some water in the quiet places, before they (we) moved up to high ground to graze and then wonder at the noise that preceded the backhoe, then the backhoe itself … watching as it lumbered its way on down the road. (*I* didn’t know what to make of such a thing; how to know what the heck the horses thought of such a thing!)

The prettier vision is Chipeta in her magical golden-glowing garden.