Palouse Outdoors: Reward and Adventure are Captured in the "B-Roll"

A stiff breeze shoved through the sagebrush, wafting the soft branch tips like a feather duster and scattering the pungent scent with the puffs of dust rising from underfoot. A valley quail breast feather clung to the sage as it whipped in the wind. The soft, downy barbs flailed around the feather shaft while the vane gently fanned. The feather was that of a female, white with a thin black outlining band and dark shaft splitting the vane perfectly centered.

The feather was deposited following a popcorn spew of around 100 of the six-ounce pewter rockets from a tangle of Russian olive, western c...