If you don’t realize from Sundance’s march that he means business, please allow me to translate from the original and ancient mustang: Sundance means business.
Remember the young guy wandering around wreaking havoc among bands a few nights/posts ago? This (above situation) was soon after I arrived on the scene, so I don’t know the exact extent of his havoc (I do know that I had seen his usual-pal way west on my way into the basin and had wondered where this young fellow was …). But although he was a fair distance from his family, that was too close for Sundance, who decided to have a little meeting with the youngster.
Soon after Sundance’s encounter, Storm reinforced the message, after which the young stallion went off to look for other targets – which he found in the form a big group of a couple of bands heading this way from an evening drink at a nearby pond. THEY ended up fleeing across a deep arroyo, up over a little table-top end of a ridge, down and through another deep arroyo and up another ridge.
Meanwhile, young master headed back to his original targets – or nearby – as seen in the pix of the evening of majesty a few nights ago.
“Never give up”: motto of young stallions everywhere. 🙂
(And oh my GOSH, I adore the image of Sundance framed by Temple Butte and McKenna Peak! Classics, all!)
When I went into the basin Saturday evening, this was the view to the northwest beyond Spring Creek Basin, its namesake canyon and lower Disappointment Valley. You can just see eastern Utah’s northern La Sal Mountains at the right edge of the vast curtain of storm-rain.
This pic, with its sage-covered foreground, semi-jagged horizon and gorgeous-glorious sky with angel rays above an isolated downpour of distant rain, illustrates *The West* to me.
Fast forward a couple of hours, and this was developing above our southeastern horizon: end of Valentine Mesa, Temple Butte, McKenna Peak, the crowns of submarine ridge and Brumley Point over Knife Edge, The Glade in the far distance (hi, Rick!) beyond Round Top and Flat Top.
At the same time as above, this was the view to the west. I thought we were going to get last light through that window to the right of the sun, but the clouds had other ideas.
While my very long lens is perfect for capturing pix of the mustangs, not even my wide-angle lens (if I’d had it along) is wide enough for this amazing view of Storm’s band under the, uh, storm clouds (he WAS born under a storm!).
The light on those clouds – and the very far ridges (bottom center between submarine ridge and Brumley Point) – with that narrow band of dark, dark blue (that’s rain away off yonder) … WOW. And just right of very bottom center is a young wild pony who recently left his family and is usually with a calm elder-ish bachelor but this evening was having fun (between peaceful-grazing energy-restoration periods) creating havoc among a few other widespread bands.
Storm at right heading back to his band after leaving a deposit on a stud pile on the road (where I am … really needing to leave as dark approaches but unwilling to leave the gorgeousity).
Other than sharpening, this pic is exactly as it came out of my phone’s most-excellent camera (how DID we survive without cameras in our phones that we can take to the wildest places on Earth?! I won’t be without my camera-cameras … but I do love my phone’s camera for the wide, wild shots). Nerd info: The other pix also had some shadow-lightening applied (with sharpening) to better see the horses in the foreground, but that’s it. WHO NEEDS AI when you have this kind of light happening right in front of you????
It’s straight-up magic, folks. Ma Nature is kind of a genius. 🙂 All I do is point and click. And share. 🙂
We didn’t get rain out of either of those storms … but we got *divine* and very fabulous rain Sunday morning!
(Thanks to Harry Potter for this post’s title/quote!)
While you marvel at the gorgeous grey beauty of Alegre and Maia, allow me to point out a couple of things: the nearly full August super blue moon (!) rising over submarine ridge on the far horizon … and ALL. THAT. AMAZING. GRASS!!!!!!!!!
Unexpected clouds prevented more than a brief sliver of a glance at the moon – already risen – last night (with also-unexpected rain after dark!), so I’m glad I made it out the night before last to see it rising pale and a bit lopsided over a most lovely band.
In many places, the horses are literally up to their eyeballs in fantastic, fabulous grass (equines, as you might know, evolved on the North American continent as widespread marshes became vast grasslands, and part of that evolution was eyes placed high on their heads particularly TO see over the sea of grass to spot predators). As our summer slides toward fall, it’s an enormous relief to see such bounty in Spring Creek Basin for our mustangs. (As rain drips outside, it’s easy to forget the long, hot, dry days and feel only gratitude for current conditions!)
Hold onto your paddles, folks, have I got some rainwater for you. 🙂
Brought to you courtesy of Mother Nature –> Southwest Colorado –> Disappointment Valley –> Spring Creek Basin:
A full water-catchment trough is always a good sign. Fortunately, though low (in the tank, uphill behind me), we’ve had enough rain lately to keep this trough full – and there have been a fair number of horses drinking here with the amazing grass around (don’t let the pic fool you; the galleta, in particular, is bonkers this year, along with the alkali sacaton). I may have explained this in the past, but it bears repeating: The triangular sheet of metal over the trough is an evaporation cover, designed to help slow evaporation of precious water in our (usually) dry climate. The shape of the cover is triangular so the horses have plenty of room to drink at the sides of the round trough.
The Flat Top pond looks small in this wide-angle view looking eastish across Spring Creek Basin, but although it has gotten pretty shallow in recent years, it’s a pretty good size.
Good thing I scouted the V-arroyo before I tried to cross it. Those are my tentative footprints in the pillowy, shoe-grabbing – and tire-stopping – mud in the center bottom of the pic. You might not think it’s too bad, but there’s a lot of water in/under that surface mud still, and it is NOT friendly to tires or shoes until it has a chance to seep deeper into the soil and dry out from the bottom up. Along the left side of the pic is the arroyo – we’re looking upstream. The bottom of the arroyo, where I’m standing on relatively firm ground, isn’t very wide (hence my name of the “V”-arroyo), and the road rises to my left – up a little water-carved bank that’s nothing like the wall still in place on the other side of the first Spring Creek crossing.
Holy Spring, err, RIVER! I know it’s hard to tell, but this is the first crossing of the usually-dry arroyo that is Spring Creek (when it’s not masquerading as a rainwater-swollen river). Yes, the other side is a road. 🙂 Well, it’s mostly a two-tiered wall; the right side of it is where I dug a channel in the wall the last time the creek ran (back in June) so I could get my ATV across and up and over. It has been widened by crazy people in a truck (I don’t know who … I don’t know anyone that silly/stupid/nutso), but it’s greatly eroded again and is going to need some custom shovel work. (And lowering of the water level. :)) The width here is probably about 25 yards? (Good darting distance.) And this water level is at least 4-5 feet below where it was at its highest/widest mark, behind me, so it’s already running with less volume than at its peak. (WoW!)
I took a lot of pix from here, and I wish I knew how to embed video; I’m still on a super-high from seeing all that water. Bear with me as I show you some upstream and downstream and high-vantage pix. (If you don’t think water in the desert is A BIG DEAL, you don’t live in a desert.)
Looking downstream. Note the two-tiered wall across the creek where the road is (should be). Most of the rocks at left are from previous flooding. But I will tell you, that kind of water can move BIG rocks. I have seen it, and I have moved big (enough) rocks out of the way of crossing in a vehicle or ATV. This is why the powers that be warn people against crossing flooded roads; that water literally grooves arroyos into our salt-desert landscape (milennia ago, this was under a giant ocean!).
Arroyo as defined by Merriam Webster: plural arroyos. 1. : a waterway (as a creek) in a dry region. 2. : an often dry gully or channel carved by water.). … Arroyos are a desert’s proof of water movement – that far bank/wall is much taller than I am. The wall where the road used to be is proof that they’re always changing – with more water.
Looking upstream. Note the water at far right; it was still finding ways to trickle along downstream.
A bit wider view from back up the road a bit. I mean … ?! 🙂 I knew, before ever I got there, that I wouldn’t be able to cross, but I did NOT know how river-esque Spring Creek would be. I love, love, love this place.
Similar view, but this shows the bend in the creek at right. … Try to follow me upstream: See McKenna Peak (the pyramid-shaped pointy peak)? Way back there is the source/start of Spring Creek, which – as you all know, being loyal, wonderful readers of this blog – drains Spring Creek BASIN (along with all its multitude of widely (and narrowly) and wildly variable tributary arroyos). As you may or may not know, the creek doesn’t roll in a straight line from there to here (or beyond/behind/downstream of me). So that bend goes around to the left – upstream of the southernmost *major* drainage/arroyo in the basin – and past another creek/arroyo crossing (below the dugout, if you’ve visited). It comes from the eastish side of the basin – with the northernmost *major* drainage/arroyo entering from the northish to also run back to (really from) the northeast. Are you still with me? There are three *major* drainages in Spring Creek Basin with Spring Creek being the lowest, middle drainage – named as the very-most-major drainage and namesake of the basin it drains.
Water is important here. Knowing how it flows is part of the importance. Back in the very-long-ago day, some other silly people – who apparently didn’t know about arroyos and the highly-erodable quality of the salt-desert soil – tried to dam Spring Creek just below the confluence of the third major arroyo. Thinking they would create a reservoir out of which to irrigate land for farming (what WERE they thinking?), they built a dam and dredged miles of irrigation ditch; the remains of both can still be seen. As the story goes, the first major rain of the (likely monsoon?) season brought water rolling like a river down every tiny arroyo, down to and through the big drainages, blasted a hole in the dam that likely had cost boatloads of blood and sweat and resulted in tears (!) … and they went away *disappointed* (har har). … Mother Nature always wins, folks.
Well, I knew better than to attempt the crossing of Spring Creek Basin’s *river* (without more rain … which we’re getting again as I type … the creek would likely be done flowing within 24 hours … though the water will last in pockets and seeps for a good long while), so despite the big group of a couple of bands of mustangs not far away, I headed out, already on a great big, marvelous high.
What you’re looking at in the pic above is our crazy-good grass, which amazes me because of the little – but always valuable – rain we’ve gotten this summer (this year, really; it’s been pretty darn dry since *last* year). The galleta grass is particularly bonkers this year, along with the sand dropseed and/or alkali sacaton (very similar in appearance). This is from right inside the basin’s main/western boundary entrance looking eastish.
From here, my next destination was the south rim of Spring Creek canyon, through which water runs out of Spring Creek Basin, out across lower Disappointment Valley and into Disappointment Creek, which delivers water – along with a “healthy” (aka large) dose of salt and sediment (apologies) – to the grand and spectacular Dolores River.
Spring Creek, draining Spring Creek Basin. 🙂 Around the near (left) bend, before the far bend, there’s a fence across the wide-open low ground and a water gap across the creek; that’s the basin’s western boundary. Way yonder, on the horizon, on the far side of the farthest rimrock and even beyond that blue-grey tide of rain, is the south shoulder of eastern Utah’s La Sal Mountains.
Not even my phone’s widest angle is wide enough to take in all the gorgeousity of Spring Creek through its canyon, so here’s another bit of view that takes in more of the upstream canyon area. Spring Creek Basin stretches north (straight ahead of me) and east (to my right) and south (behind me) from this perspective on the canyon’s south rim.
Those layers. The canyon is neither super deep nor particularly long. But it is so gorgeous.
In just the short time I walked out and spent along the rim, the storm to the west was already passing.
Looking upstream across the heart of Spring Creek Basin, where another storm loomed on the northeastern/eastern/southeastern horizon.
And because this is a blog about the wild horses of Spring Creek Basin, there IS a mustang out there, though I’m not sure he’s visible. As far as I know, the young mister is the only one to have crossed the creek (within view, anyway). 🙂
Grow, grass, grow!
Better late than never (this was the last day of specific rain in the forecast). I think we can be said to have gotten some monsoon rains this summer. Despite all the worry leading to this day (yesterday), soooo amazingly grateful. 🙂
* Thanks to Charley Pride for the inspiration behind this post’s title – “(High on a) Mountain of Love.”
All the heat rising into our local atmosphere is finally starting to rouse some rain clouds over the region – very scattered and random.
Now we just need those clouds to drop some rain.
Above, Maiku might have been enjoying the temperature drop when the clouds built up and the wind picked up. After a high of about 99 degrees, I sure was!
Our skies have returned to Colorado-blue (is that a color on the paint-chip charts? it should be) from the smoky conditions. That’s good for us … and I hope it’s good for firefighters and community members who are battling fires in their own home ranges.
This pic of Winona was too pastel-pretty to pass up sharing.
Storm and his band have been a bit more accessible again this summer, like last summer, and I’ve enjoyed spending some time with them. Storm hasn’t given me a lot of photographable moments, though, mainly grazing peacefully along with his mares (which is wonderful for me … but not really share-able :)).
It was during a recent evening when the eastern side of the basin lit up with amazing light just at the end of day while the western sky held a brief glow of gold-rimmed red clouds – and Storm head-down in a patch of yummy grass, in the shadowed lee of a small hill – that I remembered some pix I’d taken of him previously that I’d never posted.
So this pic isn’t recent (it’s from the beginning of June, before the rain), but my beautiful boy deserves to be seen. He was relaxed-alert watching the world from his hip-cocked perch on the side of a hill, his mares napping above him. I didn’t have the best angle from my own perch on the rounding-away side of the small hill, but take please take my word for it: It was *beautiful* – the mustang, the view, the day.
Can’t ask for much more than that … and the means to share it.
When I saw the giant hole at the side of the road as I passed, one of my favorite bands of mustangs just ahead, I thought, “hm … badger opened that hole.” And I didn’t think much more about it.
Until I stopped several yards away and was dithering around getting my camera out of my pack and ready to aim at ponies.
And I saw the low-to-the-ground scurrying grey-and-black-and-white critter. … !
It got to its hole before I got my camera to my eye, but then it proved to be wonderfully curious!
Badgers have quite a ferocious reputation, so I was glad of my long lens. I took several pix from different angles, and it watched me calmly from the safety of its burrow. Badgers commonly dig into the burrows of ground squirrels and prairie dogs to get at the critters inside (not so safe for them, eh?). See that pile of dirt? All fresh. I spent a few minutes with it, then moseyed on to finish the evening with mustangs.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 