Dust devil or dust angel?

It was a hot, dry, dusty day in the Central Valley of California. Late August or early September. I rode in the camper, while my dad drove, and my mom and younger brother rode up front, in the cab of the truck. I think I was sixteen. We’d spent a few days in the Sierra Nevada. Now we headed home to San Diego County. Dad usually drove south through the valley, but it was too hot today, so we aimed for the coast, hoping for cooler weather there. We looked forward to a bowl of clam chowder in Morro Bay. I think we were somewhere west of Fresno when it happened.

I sat on a sturdy metal cooler with my back against the oven door. From time to time I peered through the cab’s open back window at the road ahead, and talked to my parents and brother. It was a boring drive, with scenery that repeated beige and flat, in unrelenting heat. Irrigated farmland created the only break in the barrenness, with its artificial patchwork of green.

Suddenly my mom pointed at something off to the left of the road. “Look, a dust devil.” I stood to look out the window on the other side of the camper, at the swirling column of dust.

Just then I felt searing heat on the backs of my knees, as if I had bad sunburn. It was a hot day, but that was too hot. I glanced over my shoulder. Flames licked out of the camper’s oven, toward me. They came out the top and sides of the oven door, and crawled up above the back of the stove, where they caught the curtains on the windows. I yelled to the others, and my brother reminded me where the fire extinguisher was, while Dad pulled the camper over to the side of the road. He came around and took over putting out the fire.

All ended well, the fire was put out, and we drove on to our destination, grateful for the cool gray of the coastal sky, grateful for the luscious chowder, and just plain grateful.

We had no idea how the fire started. Dad kept the gas to the stove turned off while we were on the road. Not only that, the flames had seemed to occur where none should, even if the stove was in use. If I recall correctly, Dad later found a faulty valve in the gas line.

It was a freak accident, with the added freak salvation of that dust devil, and my mom pointing it out to me at the precise moment the fire started. If I’d still been seated there, my hair and clothes would’ve caught fire as quickly as the curtains. I might’ve been badly burned, and we were miles from an emergency room.

Since then I’ve thought I must’ve had a guardian angel looking after me that day, in the form of that dust devil—two, if I include Mom noticing and pointing it out to me. Whatever it was, I’ve always been grateful.

Edited to add:
This story came to mind when I commented on Eric Mayer’s recent post, Should We Give Thanks? He and I have slightly different philosophies, but I totally agree with his statement: “It is up to us to make the best of this place while we are here.”