Pretty palomino girl Rowan in the very-green budding greasewood. The mustangs LOVE greasewood, and I have to think there’s no better taste (palatability?) than when it’s first budding and yummy after a long season of it being just a woody shrub.
Happy April 1!
Heading TO Spring Creek Basin, I found the prince’s plume plants in full, crazy bloom. Why is this crazy, I hear you asking? Because they don’t usually bloom until May. IN Spring Creek Basin, the prince’s plumes I saw were a little behind these along Road K20E toward the basin, which makes sense as the basin is a bit higher elevation than along this road.
Heading OUT of Spring Creek Basin, the grey sky exploded with color at and post-sunset! Wowza. The weather wizards are giving us a whopping NINETY PERCENT chance of rain Wednesday. Do you know what Wednesday is? Wednesday is April 1, otherwise known as April Fools’ Day. Call me a fool a million times over, and please, please, PLEASE, let it RAINRAINRAIN!!!
Half a second after Buckeye had been pulling a handsome-wild-stallion pose with McKenna Peak and Temple Butte behind him (as we’re viewing him), looking at his mares, actually behind him (as he’s standing), he dropped his head. … Which was half a second too late for me to photograph *that* moment.
Still … he’s a handsome wild stallion with McKenna Peak and Temple Butte behind him – as we see him. 🙂
The magic is in knowing the wild things are in the wild places.
Is Juniper the poster mare for Spring Creek Basin or what?!
Yes. Yes, she is. 🙂
It’s always a good day when I can spend a little time with beautiful Cassidy Rain and her band. She actually posed right there for a couple of minutes. (Thank you, lady!)
The subtle light on that beloved background was sublime; it doesn’t actually translate very well in the pic. But some of the softness of that light is because it’s diffused by blowing dust. Though it’s hard to tell by Cassidy Rain’s relatively “tame” mane and tail, it was still *windy*, even very close to sunset.
Apparently, weather across the country is supposed to get crazy. … Err, MORE crazy. It was 72F here yesterday (that ain’t good). But the craziest we’re supposed to get is that today’s high will be “only” in the 50s! Wherever you are, readers, stay safe out there!
Merlin (the app) tells me this is, in fact, a mountain bluebird. I know it looks green. Pretty sure it’s not the camera/lens/white balance/color cast because it looked green in person!
That big white disc behind it is the MOON!
I got kinda skunked again trying to photograph it rising because of thin clouds that were just enough to block/blend the moon as it rose behind the eastern(ish) ridges. When I got back to my buggy from a fairly long walk into Spring Creek Basin looking for the *right* place to stand and shoot (spoiler: I didn’t actually find it), this beautiful fellow flew in to check me out from the utility wire right above me and the road. How sweet! How did it know I needed a pick-me-up? 🙂 These bright blue flashes of gorgeousity are everywhere right now. … I’m not sure whether they’re early … or right on time. The temp hit 68 insane degrees yesterday.
He gave me enough time to unpack my camera from my bag, fiddle faddle around and change some settings from moon-shooting … and of course, he posed like the gorgeous creature he is (see top pic) … before he flew off. I got this pic (above), and then everything else was a green blur (pretty sure that’s a superhero character: “The Green Blur”).
And it was a beautiful evening after all. 🙂
It DID snow most of yesterday.
Unfortunately, that snow was carried horizontally by super strong winds from the south (the south!). With any hope, the snow ended up in Little Book Cliffs, Piceance-East Douglas and/or Sand Wash Basin, all pretty much nearly north of us.
Fortunately, we did get some amount of moisture, as evidenced by the mud at the end of the day. 🙂
Shortly after I took the above pic, from Chrome’s Point looking eastish, the snow waves renewed, and visibility was nearly nil to pretty much nil. No ponies visible. Hopefully they were smarter than the human and were finding shelter in low places.
*****
As I was battening the hatches for the coming, clearing, very cold night, I happened to spot something in the – did I say clearing? – western sky above the horizon of the near western ridge that stopped me in my muddy tracks:
See the white spot? I thought it was a plane until it didn’t move.
Google says this:
On the evening of February 18, 2026, a thin, setting crescent moon appears in the west near the planet
Mercury. A “planetary parade” in the western sky after sunset also features Saturn (slightly above the pair), Venus (very low on the horizon), and potentially Neptune (requiring a telescope).
The best time for viewing is shortly after sunset on February 18, 2026, when these celestial bodies are visible together, note the IFLScience and The Planetary Society.
Cool, right? So the bright dot must be Mercury? Do you see the very faint little white dot nearly straight above the bright dot but about halfway across from the moon (directly across from the right-side point of the crescent)? It’s not “higher than the moon” … is that Saturn? I think I was too low to see Venus (the moon and planet weren’t high above my “horizon” when I saw them, but my horizon is from down in a draw, and the far horizon also is a ridge, so I’m never sure whether “the horizon” is every-ol’-body’s horizon or particular to people with flat horizons).
This was very nearly before the moon and friends dropped below my nearby horizon (and before it was covered by tatters of clearing clouds). But it might be easier in this pic to see the tiny white dot above the brighter white dot.
What a cool sighting! It almost makes up for not seeing any mesteños in the blowing snow earlier in the day. (A night-sky photographer, I most definitely am not!)
We got rain. 🙂 Don’t get squeamish about Friday the 13th; that was our LUCKY day in Southwest Colorado!
Valentine’s Day morning: Clouds clearing from the peak of McKenna and the upper butte of Temple. The snow on the left/north-facing side of McKenna Peak is fresh (and no longer there after the clouds cleared to reveal a completely clear Colorado sky).
Warm, damp ground + moisture = rising steam and lingering cloud banks. In laywoman’s terms: gorgeous.
A few miles of zooming and a hike of a couple of miles and a different part of the basin later: Seneca and her band greeted me. That’s Brumley Point behind her; McKenna Peak and Temple Butte are just to the left. They were still holding *some* clouds, but you can see the sunshine is already defeating the clouds handily.
More moisture coming this coming week? Everything is crossed, and hopes are high for even a little bit more rain or – super hopefully – some snow.
Seneca’s band had gone to water, and as their way to water doubled as my way back to my buggy, I moseyed along with them.
The sky was clearing to the northwest, but the clouds were still patchy and heavy enough in the western and southwestern and southern sky to block most of the late sunlight when I took this pic of Seneca right above the evaporation cover of the water-catchment trough. Temple Butte in the background was catching some of the gorgeous light that *was* breaking through.
And just a few/several minutes later (less than 10 minutes later from my image files’ info), from down the hill and back at my buggy … the above scene. The sun found a last-minute sneak-peak hole in the clouds to light up the lower slopes of Temple Butte. Just … kinda … wow. 🙂
“Why do you keep going back?” I sometimes get asked. … Really? 🙂 Because it’s never, ever, ever the same. Always, heart-liftingly, beautiful.
(And the same note: While there’s still a little, very patchy snow out there, it’s way melted from the images captured above.)
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 