Skywalker doesn’t seem to have a care in the world, while he’s on top of the world. The rimrock boundary at the western edge of Spring Creek Basin is nearly right behind him, and the band is mostly spread out to the left and downhill behind me as I turned around to take this pic.
Cassidy Rain thinks she’s hiding behind a half-dead juniper while she nibbles on greasewood and eyes me. 🙂 It’s not so much that she thinks she’s *hiding* as that she just feels more comfortable if there’s something between us other than open space.
Tenaz (and the other bands) were well up on the north side of Spring Creek canyon – near the highest point that looks west out over lower Disappointment Valley from above the rimrocks that form Spring Creek Basin’s dramatic western boundary – when I hiked up to them the other evening.
Below Tenaz is the eastern end of the canyon and Spring Creek (there’s actually water down there from where water running underground hits bedrock and is forced up in a decent-distance running seep). Behind Tenaz is the north-facing south rim of the canyon (the main western entrance to Spring Creek Basin is on south a short distance). To my right – ahead of him – the top of the canyon slopes upward to where it abruptly ends at the sheer vertical rim of rock that forms the basin’s natural western boundary. In some places, it’s natural, and in others, there are fences to keep the mustangs within the basin’s borders.
We came up (they were already there when I entered the basin and saw them) from an “easier” slope that comes up directly from the Spring Creek arroyo to the leftish/behind Tenaz.
Alegre. 🙂
Piedra found a nice stand of galleta grass, a native, warm-season grass. Another mare actually found it first, and Piedra pushed her off of it. All is fair in love and grazing!
Long-view images of the mustangs looking small in their big country are some of my favorite images. They show the vast scale of the mustangs’ landscape, even in as small a range as Spring Creek Basin.
The mustangs in this pic are on the south rim of Spring Creek canyon; the rimrocks above/beyond them are the north-rim, south-facing rimrocks above the canyon. They were headed down to water (yes, there are trails, and the horses know them intimately).
The canyon literally is where the Spring Creek arroyo carries water from rain (yep, we need it) that falls in the basin and runs down all the minor arroyos to the main arroyos to the major arroyos to the *major-main* Spring Creek arroyo, which gives Spring Creek Basin its name. 🙂 That water runs out of Spring Creek Basin via Spring Creek to join Disappointment Creek, and the water carried by that creek (with its source at Lone Cone, so it carries snowmelt into mid-summer if we got enough snow the previous winter …) joins the Dolores River (carrying the vast amount of sediment that ends up in the Dolores (you’re welcome)), which flows on to the Colorado River.
It’s all connected. 🙂
Pretty Terra, embraced by light.
The horses led me to a part of the basin I’d never explored before, where they were grazing and napping. There are always new places to find … for this human to find. Clearly, the mustangs were no strangers to that area!
Tenaz takes a bit of a break to watch his band and a nearby band toward the top of a hill above Spring Creek. He always looks so magnificent!
Merlin couldn’t identify the teeny little bird, but it might be some kind of sparrow (if you know, let me know!). It’s standing at the top of the “critter ladder” at the end of a water-catchment trough. It first looked at the water from the other end of the trough, then across from the horses, then fluttered over to this end and disappeared. Although I couldn’t see it from my distance away, I knew it was getting to the water level from the specifically placed critter ladder (it’s really more like a ramp with a sort of mesh over it for little toes to grip).
Is that awesome, or is that awesome?! 🙂
You’ll remember the pic from a few posts ago of Alegre and Maia, with the butt of Terra at the edge. Here’s one with Terra and Alegre and Maia and one of their stallions. Aren’t they the lucky gals. 🙂
