
Apparently, she missed getting darted this spring. 🙂



As expected after the terribly dry winter, we haven’t had much of a showing of wildflowers this year. There ARE some (and not atop the prickly varieties of cacti), but I haven’t made as much of an effort to photograph them as in years past. These beautiful blooms caught my eye in northwestern Spring Creek Basin as I was moseying between a couple of bands of mustangs.
It is SO dry. And we’ve had temps of 103 and 101 (at least) already. And that ever-present wind sucks up the moisture we do NOT have to spare (or have, period).
My happy theme is mustangs.
My thing-I-wish-we-had-more-of – always – is rain.
Keep dancing, folks. 🙂 Clouds are building in the afternoons, and that’s always a good sign.

Sometimes (OK, all the time), you never know where you’ll find the mustangs when you drive into Spring Creek Basin. And even after all my years of driving into the basin, they sometimes (!) surprise me.
These horses are at the top of Spring Creek canyon, above the rimrocks. It’s not nearly the vertical wall on the other side, where it slopes into a little “bowl” of a hillside, so their approach is easy to fathom. And they must have had a nice breeze up there, keeping the descending gnats at bay, because they were up there for at least a couple of hours (before I arrived and after I left)! And the view – I can attest – is fabulous.

Another pair of besties – and for a very long time, at least since Kestrel was just a wee weanling. Piedra has been with her or in a neighboring band for many, many years.

Is it just me, or is Master Odin growing up ever so handsome?!
He already has all his aunties wrapped around his hooves; it’s only a matter of time for some other lucky filly. 🙂

Spoiler alert: That’s not snow in the bed of the Spring Creek arroyo; that’s salt.
Mariah was crossing the arroyo from one little “flat” slightly above the arroyo to another little flat just above the arroyo in the wider drainage just as the sun was setting, giving her that glorious, albeit dusty, glow.
It is so very dry. Yay, snowpack, but for those of us who don’t live on mountain tops, it’s been badly dry since at least last fall (or earlier? we didn’t get monsoons last year, and I’m despairing of getting them this year).
Dance, folks, like nobody but the rain gods and goddesses are watching! 🙂

How is it possible that she’s so gorgeous?!
Because she – Terra – is a mustang, of course! (And mama Houdini and daddy Grey gave her excellent genetics.) She’s standing on a little outcrop above the Spring Creek arroyo where some of the rest of the band are drinking from a little seep.