Spring Creek Basin Mustangs

Now, for you Southwest-rock-art aficionados, don’t get *too* excited about/by the title of this post; I don’t mean rock art in *that* sense. I mean just that I used a uniquely weathered boulder at the base of Filly Peak to frame a band of horses napping along a ridge above Spring Creek in the western part of the basin.

I’m not sure whether it *works*. … The mustangs are pretty far and not much more than dots (white or otherwise!), but I like trying to use the basin’s other, maybe minor (!), natural beauties to show off her obvious ones.

While there is a much-weathered panel of rock-art petroglyphs on a rock wall several miles north of Spring Creek Basin, just across the highway from Road 19Q/Disappointment Road, I’ve never found any in the basin.

(I thought I’d taken a pic of the boulder with my cell phone, but apparently, I didn’t. I’ll try to rectify that missed opportunity in the near future. The pic might work better if viewers could tell that the weirdly shaped orange blob at left IS a boulder!)

To further illustrate Winona’s adeptness at keeping me in view while clipping the good grasses from the bases of boulders, here’s another image from the same evening as yesterday’s post.

But I think I like this one most of all:

She’s a master!

Winona, resourceful mustang that she is, was grazing among the boulders at the base of Filly Peak the other evening. Coincidentally, she may have been practicing her boulder-picking skills.

While I kept my eyes peeled for interesting compositions among the lichen-splashed rock giants, Winona interrupted her grazing at times, making sure to keep her eyes on me. 🙂

Sun-setting shadows already had grown long over the area east of Spring Creek canyon by the time I got down to Skywalker and his companion bands. I tagged along as they moseyed uphill from their evening drink, to a slice of sunshine over the rimrocks before night started its descent over our little piece of heaven.

You don’t survive in the wild as long as Houdini has without learning the art of where to get the best swish for the buck. In her case, bestie Alegre has the tail that’s best for the job of keeping flies away. I’ve seen Houdini numerous times following Alegre with her head positioned to take advantage of Alegre’s swishing. And it’s always Alegre. These ladies have been together for a very long time.

I’m not really sure what it is about this scene that I like so much. The band had been napping with some other bands, and at some unknown-to-this-human signal, grazing among all the horses recommenced. While the other horses grazed where they’d been napping, Buckeye’s mares decided to forage farther afield. Aiyanna was leading at this point, and she’s out of the frame to the right, up the hill.

Buckeye followed along, of course (the tree at left is the same tree at right in the pic of Dundee and Rowan).

I was fairly far away, but something about the background and smoky, diffused light caught my attention. (Don’t worry, the smoke wasn’t from local fires, and after a little more recent rain, our sky is much brighter again.) …

Just something a bit different.