On St. Patrick’s Day in Disappointment Valley, we had a bit of gold under the rainbow (and yes, it was sprinkling when I took these pix (above with my phone; below with my camera)).
In Disappointment Valley (which includes Spring Creek Basin), WATER is the treasure! In our case, there’s a whole lotta mud under that rainbow right now, and we’re feeling pretty rich. 🙂
(And yes, these pix were taken the evening of St. Patrick’s Day – no kidding!)
Odin keeps his “aunties” Piedra and Kestrel company while napping – or was it the other way around? 🙂
Mysterium. Her wild wisdom is her classic “mystery.” We like to think we know it. How amazing would it be if we really knew the broad variety of the wisdom she knows and shares with her bandmates? How amazing would it be if we humans knew or could learn a fraction of the wisdom these wild ones know in their bones, through the ages and their mothers and mothers’ mothers?
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We had a wonderful little snowfall yesterday morning (from overnight). Nice and heavy and wet, and the parched ground and vegetation slurped it all up in practically record time. We might get more. We HOPE for more!
Mud is a good thing. 🙂
Don’t look now, but the snow is coming.
Oh, wait, carry on. It didn’t make it actually into the valley from the southern ridges. (Argh!)
Buckeye and his family weren’t worried (by it coming or by it not actually reaching us). Of course. 🙂
While Denver and the Front Range of Colorado hog the snow (sorry about your “impossible driving conditions” as we continue to be super dry over here in, you know, the OTHER part(s) of the state), we’re hoping to get any bits of the dregs?! Pretty please?
Storm graciously paused in his grazing – though not in his chewing – to give me a long look on a glorious evening. (I love how his long tail is casually draped over a bit of vegetation.) The ground was still somewhat damp from recent moisture, and graupel still held its “ball” shapes in little piles under bigger, sheltering shrubs like shadscale and four-wing saltbush. There was something to love for all of us.
Lovely Seneca on another quiet, peaceful, beautiful evening in Spring Creek Basin. We’ve had a run of these ordinarily extraordinary days – that also happen to be very, mostly dry. Starting today, though, we have moisture in the forecast – for the next several days! If we get even a fraction of the forecast rain, snow or both, I’ll be doing cartwheels (or what passes for cartwheels at my age). 🙂
So-pretty Gaia looks absolutely gorgeous simply pursuing her evening grazing. Love her winter fringe. 🙂
This is what passes for Winona signalling that the visit with the weird human is at an end:
All photos presented in the order in which they were taken in a couple of fractions of a second. 🙂
This isn’t the first mountain bluebird I’ve seen, and it won’t be the last; there are sometimes great flocks of them winging and zipping and darting around the region right now. It WAS the first to settle semi close enough for me to “focus” on it (please forgive the lack of focus) and click the shutter so I could share his handsomeness with all of you. Winter may not have favored us this year, but spring is inexorably on its way.
Photographed with still-winterized greasewood between us, I’m about to get the one-ear treatment from Winona, too, as she considers her options for moseying on or staying where she is. She eventually moseyed on, giving me the head shake in passing. I’ll have a pic of that in a future post.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 