New Year's Eve Bliss!

The Pinto band visited this morning.  The Bay and Roan band was standing behind them waiting for the chance to get some hay.  The Pinto herd is much bigger and the stallion is pretty tough so the other band waits quietly to pick up what ever is left.  Life is tough at every level.

A Quiet Winter Morning in the High Desert

Good morning Friends!  We've had a bit of off and on again snow the last day or two and will have for today and tomorrow.  It is quiet out here most of the time but with this frosty blanket the larger world is silent.  It is calm and serene.  Many little quail in the yard looking for a cold breakfast.  

Our Mustang friends traveled through looking for "fallen of the truck" hay.  It was the big Pinto Band. Here a few snaps of a few of their members.  Amazing how quiet these big untamed creatures are:

My four legged wild ones and I wish you all a Happy New Year~ May 2013 be a healthier, more peaceful, and  kinder year for everyone.  

Winter has settled into the High Desert.  

The weather is gray and windy here in the mountain desert of Nevada.  the air is filled with snow flurries and a growling persistant wind,  Life seems to have slowed just a tiny bit.  A few folks out doing that last minute shopping thing that we in America are want to do.  

We are planning a move ... again.  Hopefully this will be the last one for either me or my Mother.  We have a mobile family - in the extreme.  I love this high country....mountain range after mountain range.  Feels somehow safe - a comfortable illusion.  

In the quiet of the high altitude winter I've been pondering human violence.  I think Karen Armstrong is right, it is time to practice compassion.  No more dead children by the hand of man...where ever it happens:  Afganistan, Israel and Arab occupied lands, weary and war torn Africa, Detroit, Newtown...anywhere.  Enough!  No more grieving parents because someone set off a gun, a bomb, a land mine.    

The CEO of the NRA suggested a police man in every school.  Very cavalier of him but perhaps he is not entirely wrong.  Perhaps we should use our National Guard or regular Army or Marines or Navy Seals to protect ours from us.  At least until we can agree on what is the national acceptable level of violence.  Yes, I think we need to be that blunt.  Let's talk about what we ignore.  We haven't yet figured out domestic violence let alone killing children in their schools and on their streets.  Perhaps this is the time we look at all of it.  It is all so much larger than developing a sane agenda for gun control.  We love our guns.  A loaf of bread and a hand gun in every home.  So be it.  Let's at least talk about those "fences" and who or what they are keeping in or keeping out.  Let's discuss those of us who are unstable and need a solid mental health program.  Let's discuss why we feel unsafe and afraid of strangers and worry about intruders.  Let's talk about how much gun Americans need to feel safe!

On another note...to my Christian friends out there, I wish you a peaceful holiday.  May the New Year be safe and healthy for you and those you love!  I dearly hope for a New Year that is more filled with pece than violence.  May the passage of time be kind to us all.

For Thanksgiving 2012

Wishing all my blogging friends in the cyber-village a peaceful and fret-free holiday.  I am grateful for being able to enjoy your creative endeavors.  Thank you for sharing.  Stay warm and safe!

A Small P.S.
What A Diffence A Day Makes:

Yesterday ~

Today ~

Besides the autumn poets sing,

                                 A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the haze.

~Emily Dickinson

Brenda's Photo Challenge: Autumn In All Her Glory

Autumn in the high desert is awash in shades of white, gray and sand but there are exceptions...

"Delicious Autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." 

  ~ George Eliot

                                        (the co-mingling of snow and autumn on Mt. Rose)

"I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house.  So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air."  

 ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Autumn, the year's last loveliest smile." 

  ~  William Cullen Bryant

                        

                   "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."  

 ~ Albert Camus

             "Every leaf speaks bliss to me fluttering from the autumn tree." 

 ~ Emily Bronte

Finally Something Like A Week-end Off!

"Rest is the fitting of self to its sphere"

~ John Dewight

One of my mother's companions worked two 6 hours shifts this week-end and I spent the entire 12 hours out of the house involved in non-care giving tasks.  It was exhilarating!   My first break since my son's wedding in March.

This whole tour of duty has raised many issues for me about what communities should do to support at home care-givers but that is grist for another blog.  Coming soon to Wildwoods Retreat....

Spent Friday and Saturday immersed in the PRESENT.  What a joy!  Climbed through fields, walked back streets and traveled to Mt. Rose to catch the co-mingling of snow and autumn.  

Until yesterday had not seem Sarge or Winter (Mustangs) for a number of days.  Managed to catch the two of them on the Toll Road in South Reno.  Sometimes those Mustangs remind me of raccoons every where (only much bigger of course) ... they are very good survivors and great scavengers:

Found large fields in Reno that are home to wild things and people on horse back.  The fields were surrounded by barbed wire.  I wondered with Robert Frost about what was to be kept in and what was to be kept out...

And lastly I drove around the hills looking at empty houses that were for sale.  Each house it's own tale, I'm sure.  I'm not in the market but I love the romance of a good view and found one that was particularly good.  The deck looks out on the south valley heading toward Carson City.  

Imagine a comfortable chair on the deck and a hot cup of coffee or tea with the peace of the solitude.    Ommmmm.

SNOW ~ Oh No!

MT ROSE - elevation 10770 Ft

Autumn was short lived.  Warm days and frosty nights last week.  Blustery, wet and cold around the clock this week.  Snow down to the foot hills.  I'm not ready and it seems that Mother Nature does not gives a fig!

Morning Glories Fending off the Cold Nights

Delicate and pretty but tenacious... botanical survivors! 

A Visit From Friends

I've not seen the Mustangs in a couple of weeks.  As the round ups continue I often worry that Winter, Sarg or Marco have been rounded up and shipped off to auction.  But yesterday in the late afternoon I heard a whinny at the gate and sure enough there were the bachelors with several friends, including the black stallion with the crocked blaze on his face.  I opened the gate and in they marched in single file to eat the dropped apples in the garden.  They are beginning to get their shaggy, thicker winter hair.   They gorged on apples, cleaned up the yard nicely, and then ambled down the road to their mountain pass home.  All is well with the Mustang world for now.

Winter

Sarg

First time these two below have ventured inside the gate.  Their last visit was spent peering through the front fence:

Nothing like a little Mustang therapy!

At Last ... RAIN!

"The later rain, ---it falls in anxious haste

 Upon the sundried fields and branches

bare,

Loosening with searching drops the rigid

waste,

As if it would each root's lost strength

repair."

~ Jones

We even have shallow puddles and a bit of red mud!

The dogs however, are not so thrilled and have taken to bed to fend of the chilled wet weather.

Exploring A State Road

A late afternoon drive south of our current home.  The highway hugs the base of the Sierras.  The slope of mountain surrounds the high desert valley floor.  The peaks flirt with the thin air that floats above them at 8000 feet.

Valley ranches  nestled at the base of the Sierra foothills...

I've been watching this bachelor for a couple of weeks   He seems to lead the herd and rules with an iron hoof.  None of the other guys can eat too near him without risking a swift and well aimed kick.  He is very wild but loves apples.  He has  taken to whinnying at the gate well after dark for a quick session of "pick your own".  He is spooky around my flash light.  It will be interesting to see if he finds his own females.  I don't yet know if the Mustangs come down the mountains when the snow begins to fall.  Have not seen the Mustang Winter in several days.  

View From the Front Porch

Full moon creeping over the high desert mountains.  

The Brenda Photo Challenge: 

My America ~ Freedom! 

"Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse."

~ Albert Camus 1913 - 1960

Volunteer marigolds...choosing a life outside the 'mainstream' garden.

My symbol of freedom are the herds of Mustangs that wander the mountain valleys near my house.  They are an icon of the western expansion, from the Spanish explorers to the Eastern farmers and prospectors, who trekked across the land looking for a better life.

These Mustangs waiting patiently out side the garden gate...wondering if any of the apples on the ground are meant for them.

The Big Bay Herd getting themselves into trouble.  They sometimes behave like over-grown rabbits by grazing on the front lawn of residents who have moved into territory the horses' genetics whisper 'this is my home' too.  Citizens call the state and the state rounds up the animals and puts them up for auction. Sometimes FREEDOM carries the ultimate huge price tag: life or death.  

A Bachelor Herd pondering the question of "how much" freedom (their side of the fence) or plenty of apples, grass and water (my side of the fence) is for them.  Freedom is always about deciding because in freedom there is choice: which side of the fence (particularly pressing in an election year, eh!).

Choice/ Freedom  is  a burden and a joy.

Celebrating Early Morning in the Garden

Enough said!  :-)