In the last few weeks, Megan Brown has noticed her animals have started to cough.

Megan's a rancher raises cattle and hogs in northern California.

It's the air that's making her animals sick, or more precisely the smoke.

Megan's just a few miles from the North complex fires, which were touched off by a lightning

storm back in August.

We've only had one clear day for about a month.

So our house, it's like fog.

It's just everything is enveloped in this smoky fog.

And like the water troughs for my animals, where they drink, all covered in a layer of ash.

Our vehicles just covered an ash.

I have a garden and it's just white.

Everything's covered in ash and it is surreal.

It sounds apocalyptic.

It is.

It's like I feel like I'm on Mars.

Megan is the kind of rancher who will tell you all about the swimming pool she built for her pigs.

She grew up on this farm.

On land, her family's worked for 170 years.

She knows the place so well that she can tell what season it is by smell.

The fall, she says, smells like tarweed.

And fire season.

That is a smell too.

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