Miss Bia, looking lovely in the layers and snow. 🙂
(Note: At this point, the snow has been gone for several days, but I wanted to post a few mustang images taking advantage of the little snow we had! After this morning, though, the blog will return to current conditions, which is to say, NO snow.)
Odin. Odalicious. Oh-delicious!
Get it? 🙂
What a handsome youngster.
Kestrel is ready for the snow, but she’s giving me a look that seems to wonder whether *I* am ready for the snow. In fairness, she lives there, but I had a bit of a distance to cover to get out to the main county road.
This was a few days ago, when I was out with Terra’s family. It had snowed a bit over the basin early that morning, but as you can see in the background, the “big” snow that evening was coming.
As I mentioned in the post with Cassidy Rain, it wasn’t more than about half an inch total, but it sure looked promising when it was incoming!
The snow is gone now (mostly), but it got cold, making for gorgeous, clear night skies under the waning moon and sparkling stars.
Spring Creek Basin and Disappointment Valley didn’t get a lot of snow out of yesterday’s blow-in – maaaaaaaaybe half an inch? – but it’s such a novelty this “winter” to have snow at all. We’ll take it!
The morning after (yesterday, as you’re reading this), I went out to see what I could see and found Cassidy Rain and her band. Another novelty: She stood and “posed” for me in the snow!
A little bit of snow, and Temple and Madison thought it was a good excuse to RUN! 🙂
The above pic was shortly after I got into Spring Creek Basin. By the time I was leaving, it was snowing, and the snow was sticking, and the landscape was all white. I doubt it was even a full inch, but this “winter,” we’ll take all the white stuff Ma Nature is willing to send us!
Question: Is Mysterium posing, or is she alert to something?
Hint: She does love her naps, when it might look like she’s “posing,” but she really doesn’t do posing. 🙂
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!!!!
I was sitting on the ground, lens trained on some horses, when I heard them spook and looked up to see that something had caught their attention. THEY didn’t go far at all (more a spook-in-place kind of thing), and then I saw a flash of moving-red … FOX! Wow. It must have been in one of the little/shallow curvy arroyos nearby, and I’m not sure what spooked IT. I must have walked semi-past it earlier to go uphill of where the horses were (note the view beyond Mysterium!).
Unfortunately, there was a tree between us, and then it disappeared into one of the drainage folds … and when I caught sight of it next, it was nearly over the ridge. I wish it had stopped to give us a quick look, but nope.
Wowowowowow! I think the mustangs were just as thrilled (OK, interested) as I was. I doubt they see many flashy red foxes around. (We weren’t super far from where I found the fox last year, but we weren’t close, either. I don’t know what kind of territory a fox covers?)
We (all the “we” people under the same sky I was under) had fantastic, long-lasting sun dogs yesterday! (Sun dogs … sundogs … which do you prefer? I’ve probably gone back and forth.) Sometimes both sides were super bright and prismatic, and other times, only one side was bright, and the other side was dim – and then they would swap.
What ARE sun dogs?
According to Google AI:
“Sundogs (or parhelia) are bright, colorful spots of light appearing on either side of the sun, caused by sunlight refracting through hexagonal ice crystals in high-altitude clouds, common in cold weather. They look like “phantom suns” or rainbow-like patches, often red closest to the sun, and usually signal approaching rain or storms, despite being associated with cold, clear conditions.”
You can find a comprehensive explanation via Wikipedia’s definition here, and a fun one from the Old Farmer’s Almanac here.
The Almanac says that seeing sun dogs often means that “rain is on the way” and to “look out for foul or wet weather!” We in Colorado would challenge the word “foul” because we’ll all be rejoicing greatly if we get any kind of wet weather! We do have “PM rain/snow showers” in Thursday’s forecast, along with very cold temps for several days afterward. The temp yesterday hit 60F again, so that’ll be a big change.
If you’re wondering about why sun dogs are called sun dogs, the Almanac has an answer for that, too:
“According to Greek mythology, Zeus walked his dogs across the sky, and those “false suns” in the sky on either side of the sun’s disk were his two dogs.”
It’s fun to imagine that the ancient Greeks also liked to walk their dogs to enjoy nature and get some exercise. 🙂
Bundle up, and THINK SNOW!
(I should mention that the above pic was taken from the edge of Big Gypsum Valley, above Gypsum Gap, which, from that direction, is the gateway to Disappointment Valley.)
Why does Flash always look so grumpy? 🙂
That’s not the intro to a joke; I really don’t know! He does take his band-stallion duties very seriously, and there were two other bands very nearby that evening. … But they were very quiet and peaceful, napping under a tree and a little beyond, both farther down the slope they were all occupying. A young stallion’s gotta be *on* all the time!
And maybe he’s also upset about our lack of winter moisture, though they were fairly near a pond that should have water (it did as of late last fall). Or maybe that’s just me!
Corazon wasn’t on any big ridge, but because I was slightly lower, and none of the land between us and the very far background ridge was visible, it gives the impression of vast country, which, of course, it is.
I love the simplicity of mustang, land and light.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 