*Spoiler* alert: The bummer is NOT Corazon. 🙂
The bummer, as you can see from the endless brown above (NOT Corazon, who, of course, is black and white), is the utter lack of snow yesterday, despite the teasing forecast that got our hopes up. I’m not sure what’s worse: snow in the forecast that never happens … or endless days of straight-up zero percent chance that it’ll happen.
Cassidy Rain and her band were around a little water source that was partially open, partially frozen. The white on the ground in the foreground is salt; it comes to the surface particularly when the ground has been damp.
We’re hoping for snow tomorrow, but the forecast isn’t looking so hot, err, wet.
Who doesn’t love that handsome Hollywood face?
After the disturbing news and images from the Capitol on Wednesday, a big hike in the basin finally took me to a visit with Hollywood’s band. As you can see from the background, there’s not a lot of white in our world these days, but we have a chance of snow on Saturday. Not a big chance, but we’re high on hope out here.
There are few words strong enough to condemn the violence yesterday upon the U.S. Capitol, and people wiser and more eloquent than I am already have spoken out against the terrible revolt.
Heartbreaking.
A mustang is ever alert, even in wide open spaces.
In a switchup from yesterday’s post, nearly snow-white Kwana is the bright spot in this landscape, southish a few miles from the location where I found Hayden.
Not much bothers Hayden as he browses among the lasting snow patches deep in Spring Creek Basin. The high ridges still have more snow, and hopefully the rest of the land will get snow soon (Tuesday?).
Remember when Storm had a mohawk?
Back in the good ol’ days? 🙂
Truly, I’ve wanted to use that line – from Dierks Bentley’s “Living” – for a very long time.
The thing is, I generally walk around, from waking to bedtime, with a heart full of grateful. So when to use that line to particularly highlight my gratitude for “all I’ve been given”?
The first day of a brand new year – after a really rather gnarly and ucky year – seems like a good time. 🙂
Looking back, it’s hard to find much about 2020 about which to feel grateful, but it IS a good lesson in finding joy in the little things … that maybe aren’t so little after all.
I am healthy. My family is healthy. A dear friend had a giant (!) health situation (unrelated to COVID) and came through, if not unscathed, relatively OK. I have a home and money for groceries and cat food. My horses – if a bit light on water – are thriving – and they have water. I am fortunate to have the support of a truly excellent BLM partner. I live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, surrounded by mustangs (and for that, I am grateful to my employer), and probably I am one of the people least affected by the awfulness of the global coronavirus pandemic. On and on could I go. … Why wouldn’t I be grateful? How could I NOT be grateful?
And there it is: It’s relatively easy for me to be full-of-heart grateful. For (many, many) others, situations of life are not so fortunate or optimistic. I don’t want to gloss over or dismiss those struggles, even as I acknowledge my fortunes.
“Sometimes the world’s just right,” and at some point in time in the coming year, no matter how brief (and hopefully for much longer), I hope everyone can experience that feeling.
With hearts full, 2021, here we come. May it be blessed.
Although here Storm is looking back at another stallion and his band across a steep, deep arroyo, let’s turn our faces forward, away from the global chaos that was 2020.
As another calendar year spreads its as-yet blank days before us, there’s no way to know what lies ahead. A list of “funnies” sent recently by a friend included this gem: “We can all agree that in 2015 not a single person got the answer correct to (this): ‘Where do you see yourself five years from now?'”
Some thrive on chaos – and causing it – and others seek to be the peaceful, quiet power that moves through the days, keeping friends and family close, seeing the beauty (not the drought) in sunny skies, treasuring the clouds (that hold the drought at bay), knowing that in even the smallest, meanest things, there is beauty to behold.
We can be the chaos, or we can be the peace. Maybe sometimes, a little shakeup is good (even if it takes a while to learn the fullness of it); in many times, peace is a balm.
Look forward. See beauty. Know peace.
Happy New Year.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 