Rimlight

6 11 2020

The last low rays of light just touch Mariah and the edges of Spring Creek canyon in the western part of Spring Creek Basin.

Still dusty out there. … We’re looking forward to a wet weekend!





Three for love

5 11 2020

Three lovelies – Houdini, Alegre and Maia – to start your day the bright way.





Dark and handsome

4 11 2020

He’s not terribly tall, but he is dark (even when not backlit), and he’s wonderfully handsome. He’s Maiku, a wild stallion of Spring Creek Basin.





Into the light

3 11 2020

Today, walk in light, so all our tomorrows are as bright as they may be.





No trails, no problem

2 11 2020

On Halloween, I had great fun hiking with a group from Telluride’s Sheep Mountain Alliance into a part of Spring Creek Basin that is overlapped by McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area.

Lexi and Mason from SMA brought five interested – and interesting – people to see this area that’s in the same county as Telluride (San Miguel) … and a world away climate- and geology- and geography-wise.

Disclaimer: The pic above of Juniper walking past McKenna Peak was NOT taken during our hike. 🙂

We didn’t see any of our fabulous mustangs during our hike in the far southeastern part of the basin, but we did see a couple of tarantulas and lots of cool fossils (including a couple of faint but awesome nautilus impressions!). I got to talk about my favorite subject ever (I bet none of you can guess what that is … ;)), and Lexi talked to us about McKenna Peak and the CORE Act – the Colorado Recreation and Economy Act.

From the website:

“The CORE Act is the most significant and broadly-supported effort to protect Colorado’s most cherished lands, waters, and forests in a generation. The legislation would protect roughly 400,000 acres of public lands in Colorado, ensuring that future generations can always enjoy our state’s mountains, rivers and wildlife.”

McKenna Peak Wilderness Study Area is proposed for inclusion in the San Juan Mountains area. This link shows the locations of the areas; scroll down to read a little more about McKenna Peak and see where it’s located. The entire WSA isn’t included, just the part in San Miguel County. As with anything else, politics plays a part. Our San Miguel County commissioners are fully supportive of this inclusion, just as they were of the naming of Temple Butte, which is in San Miguel County.

Regular readers know the shape of both McKenna Peak and Temple Butte as icons of our Spring Creek Basin horizon. Given our location and lack of specific trails, I don’t think we’ll be overrun with visitors. But how cool would it be to see the status of even part of this amazing landscape go from wilderness study area to full wilderness area? It’s protected from motorized/mechanized-vehicle use currently, which enables it to feel secluded and protected to the wild horses and other lives that know its wildness (even us humans).

Being able to share it with another few like-minded humans gave me great enjoyment. To see their wonder and appreciation of this landscape I love … well, to be perfectly honest, it made me happy. 🙂





Pretty is Piedra

1 11 2020

Better late than never: This is the pic of pretty Piedra that I tried to schedule a few days ago, before the snow hit. She’s pretty “snowy” (!), but that ground (about a week ago) was without the benefit of recent beneficial white stuff.

I mean, how PRETTY is she?! 🙂





Flutter

29 10 2020

All that lovely snow surrounding Sundance is moisture in the ground now. The morning after the snow day, the sky was clear, and the temp was 9 degrees! Yesterday afternoon, the mercury hit 56. Hard come, easy go. 🙂





No bluebird ever prettier

28 10 2020

It didn’t take long for our Colorado bluebird skies to return after a day of snow. The welcome sight of stars overnight means cold, cold temps in the morning.

Those single-degree temperatures mean the dirt roads solidify again in their frozen state, which enables access to the places where the wild things roam. And that clear, sunny sky also means that bright ol’ sun melts snow faster than the air temp would have you believe. … Which means that before long, that solid road you rolled in on isn’t so solid when you finally get the unmistakable message that it’s time to leave the wild things!

Madison and Temple were finding plenty to eat as they browsed amid the snowy lumps and bumps … and napped … and browsed again.

We got enough white stuff to make the earth happy for a little while – and very soggy! And not nearly enough so that we’re (still, again) wanting more. 🙂

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As it turns out, this white, wet bounty for us coincides with my mom’s birthday today! So the photo of two beautiful, strong mares fits nicely with the beautiful, strong woman who is my mom, Nancy. 🙂 She did say that the snow was better here (in Colorado) than there (in Texas). She grew up with horses (and other animals) on her family’s farm and her grandparents’ nearby farm in Ohio, so she knows snow.

Happy birthday, Mom! 🙂 I love you!





Beauty in the snow

27 10 2020

So it looked a little like this yesterday. 🙂

It’s hard to say how much snow we got. Between a couple of inches and a few. Every tiny tenth counts big when we need it as much as we do. As snow fell lightly most of the day, it also melted into the desperate earth. The really great thing is that there’s still a blanket of such-needed white stuff all over our world.

Also wonderful in the white-stuff department: The major fires burning in Colorado right now also received some relief in the form of snow.





The color of white

26 10 2020

As I type this Sunday night, we’re getting snow in Disappointment Valley. We didn’t get much (hardly any) rain (spits driven by howling wind), but the snow is very wet. 🙂

As I type THIS – the update to the post on which I’m about to hit “publish,” on Monday morning – we have 2.5 inches of white stuff on the ground in lower Disappointment Valley. Snow kept covering the satellite dish last night, making it impossible to keep an Internet connection.

And it doesn’t look like Word Press has enough oomph (!) to allow the pic to attach, but if it DID, you would have seen bright orange tamarisk providing some color behind snow-white Piedra. Also known as salt cedar, tamarisk is a hardy, water-sucking shrub found in arroyos and other water ways, so it’s not very desirable … but it does provide some color in the high-desert basin during our autumn days.

In any case, the pic doesn’t match current conditions (!), so maybe it’s OK that for the first time (?), this’ll be a blog post without a pic (!).

Today, for a while anyway, we’re looking at a white, white world, and it’s 18 degrees. Happy moisture. 🙂