Dennis and I figured
this would be our last chance to get out to the West Desert to see if we could
find the wild horses again before the summer heat moved in. We all know wild horses magically disappear when the summer heat moves in.
You know when you
have your favorite fishing hole.. the one you always have good luck with? It's hard
to decide to try a new place when we have had
such good luck the last time we
were there. Not getting lucky...just seeing wild horses. Not stallions (insert shirtless cowboy), but animals. We pondered about it over our morning grits and decided to venture out
on to the other side of the Cedar Mountain range. We drove for miles seeing plenty of watering
troughs, but no indication that they were being used. The only wild life we saw was about six
head of cattle and one scary snake.
We began to think we
were not going to see anything except each other. We
reckoned we had driven far enough and needed to start riding. No sooner had Dennis unloaded the first horse
then he could see a band of horses far south of us.
I hurried to get my camera out so I could get at least one picture of
them before they caught wind of us and would be long gone.
Once we mounted (our horses)
Dennis made the plan to ride further west, and circle back up. We would never
ride straight toward them, but keeping parallel to them. Once we got closer we
dismounted our horses, sneaking behind them, using them as camouflage so to speak. We finally came to
a stop just so we could watch them, and we were tired of crawling by the back end of the gassy horses.
All of a sudden we heard bunch of
whinnying and the sound thundering hooves beating on the ground behind us... Another band of horses were coming to join
the ones we were watching! When the second
herd got there it was so exciting, I almost dropped my ENSURE. We were hiding behind our horses still when we were noticed, and they stopped to give us the stink eye.
There were about five horses, three paints and two roans.
They formed a
scouting party and were coming to check us out. Good thing I wore my cutest boots.
As the charged up the hill toward
us I did not know whether to drop the cameras and run, or stand in the path of their stampede and take more pictures.
They came right up to us, and of course
once they got up to us and realized we weren't fellow horses, they were gone in a flash and a bang. Just like my twenties.
Wow ! What a thrill. Best thing I've seen since Matlock.
PS...letting my daughter Kacy proofread my post has added a great deal of more chuckles, I think I need to hire her.
A scorched tree with new growth coming in behind it
