The cow is now obvious: A perfectly shaped head, a body covered in skin that’s become cured leather – taut and solid like a drumhead. She’s upright, wedged between two burned trees, ribs exposed, a flurry of maggots working furiously. Her calf lies in a heap nearby.

Grumbach is silent. He rubs his jaw and points to another carcass farther up the hill on the grazing land in the Colville National Forest, just south of the Canadian border. The land recently burned in the Stickpin fire.

Grumbach, like cattle ranchers across fire-ravaged north-central Washington, isn’t sure of his total losses. Read more. Erica Curless, SR

What do you consider the worst part of the fires that have swept through Washington and Idaho these past few weeks?

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