Rebecca Gentry can clearly picture the first time she saw her family’s ranch outside of Hardin, Montana, after the wildfire. A week after the burn, “The ground was still smoking,” she remembers. “There were huge holes in the ground where the trees used to be. It was almost impossible to look at.”

Normally a stretch of rolling, golden hills dotted with ponderosa pines, the landscape was painted a uniform gray.

All told, the 2021 PF Fire killed more than 50,000 trees on the Gentry ranch.

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