Pretty in gold

4 01 2025

Pretty Rowan watches the pronghorns the other day. Interested; not bothered or worried.

Love her winter dapples. 🙂





Winter whites needed

3 01 2025

Mariah, again. Napping, again.

She does pick the most beautiful nap spots, eh?

We need a bit of winter white to match her fuzzy coat, or we’re going to be looking that brown when we don’t want to be looking that brown – and way too hot to boot – later in the year. We don’t have any moisture in the forecast … hopefully that will change sooner than later!

(That white on the shady side of McKenna Peak IS residual snow, not melting on the north-facing, shady side of the peak. But we still need a lot more, covering a lot more ground.)





On the second, from the first

2 01 2025

I was just thinking the other day that sweet Madison hadn’t featured on a blog post recently, which is really a travesty because she’s soooo pretty. And here she is!

The horses were mostly on or along one of the roads in the basin, so I dropped below the road to get McKenna Peak and Temple Butte looming large in the background.

They were semi-browsing, semi-napping and not in any hurry to get anywhere in particular. Kinda summed up the first day of the year perfectly. 🙂





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.





Old year’s end

31 12 2024

The last couple of years, I’ve done a sort of synopsis of the year, mustang-style, on the last day of the year.

I don’t know what happened to the days this year, but clearly, there weren’t enough. 🙂

Yes, yes, I know there are the same number of days every year, but let’s say this: They got away from me this year. I do hope to have a review of “12 for 2024” … but it won’t be today … and it might be farther into January 2025 than maybe I’d like.

Meanwhile, let’s just mosey on out of 2024, up and over a ridge on our way to a pond full of water, shall we? And here’s hoping for plenty of water in 2025 (though we’re going to need a whole lotta snow in the next couple of months)!

Happy New Year’s Eve, my lovely readers! I hope you’ve enjoyed this year full of mustangs, and I hope you’ll stick around for more of the same in the coming year. 🙂





Gleaming

30 12 2024

Terra catching just a bit of some of the last light of the day from atop the Spring Creek arroyo in the eastern part of Spring Creek Basin.





On the road

29 12 2024

Luscious late light warms a not-too-cold Christmas Day in Spring Creek Basin. The horses were following a road around a curve, which gives them the seeming zig-zag pattern from my vantage point at a spot a bit farther west. Moments later, they were peacefully grazing in the shade of the world’s edge (at least our part of the world), and I headed out to await Santa’s flyover.





Trickle-wide creek

28 12 2024

Alegre and Kestrel drinking from the trickle that is Spring Creek in the eastern part of Spring Creek Basin on Christmas Day.

At least if we don’t have much snow, the water isn’t all frozen.





Grassland snow

27 12 2024

Can you see the snow?

You might need to zoom in a bit.

It didn’t stick (at all), but for a brief bit of morning the day after Christmas, I think we could say it was still Christmas snow. 🙂

Buckeye and his band were on a mission up a drainage (maybe to the pond), so they didn’t stick around, but I was super glad to see them as I’ve been looking for them the last week or so … obviously (I now realize) in the wrong places!





Christmas Day visit

26 12 2024

Can’t do much better than spending part of Christmas Day with dear, handsome Sundance and his family. 🙂

We didn’t get a white Christmas, but we did get some moisture, which was much needed!