I will never forget my first call in Arizona. I was training with a new service, having just moved out west, and my preceptor Maddy was riding shotgun. Our paramedic and Captain, Dave, sat in the back, fighting nausea as I struggled to pilot our rig down I-40, doing 85 through blustering prairie gusts. Driving ambulances out in Northern Arizona could not have been more alien to me; I spent the first year of my EMS career in the dense, teeming, congested labyrinth of Northern New Jersey. There, I worked my first ever shift during the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. We got hit hard out there. Very hard. And while it was an overwhelming, heartbreaking, and disorienting way to enter emergency medicine, the statewide shut down eased me into driving ambulances.

I remember running the turnpike alone, no taillights for miles, passing shoulders and medians teeming with deer and other wildlife that had emerged to rapidly reclaim the suddenly dormant world. Shelter-in-pace orders kept everyone at home. It cleared formerly overloaded roads while ambulances zipped past each other like speeding ships in the night with neither lights nor sirens. There was no need, no traffic to clear.

But in the summer of 2021 East of Flagstaff, we were definitely blasting responding lights and sirens, parting traffic like the Red Sea. We’d been banged out for a motor vehicle versus pedestrian (in the bizarre parlance of EMS dispatch, a phrasing I never understood). Motor vehicle versus pedestrian is a bad call. Like really bad. And on the highway it’d be worse. But also, more bizarre? Our patient, or whatever would be left of them, was 30 miles out and all we could discuss on the drive was why the hell there would be someone out on the interstate so far from anywhere. In Arizona though, between the hippies walking across America and folks overestimating the range of their gas tanks and underestimating the remote Southwest, anything was possible.

As we tore East preparing for what would almost definitely be a fatal and messy scene, the towering ponderosa pines gave way to junipers. The junipers thinned and soon, it was all rabbit brush, sage, scrub prairie. Scrub and dirt. And more dirt. Out there, with nothing to slow it down, the wind roared. It reigned over those long flat expanses as it always had. We were subject to its every whim, guests in its realm.

Spring in Northern Arizona is a monster. It’s beautiful, but capricious—tempestuous and wild. Ten miles out, the once tame breezes began to pick up steadily. Before long it was doing all it could to swipe us off the road. An ambulance drives like shit, and this one—a big (and old) Ford 450 Superduty—was getting knocked by 50 mph gusts like a tugboat in a hurricane. I was jerking the wheel back and forth trying to stay straight through each sudden blast, trying to pilot us through the high wind to our patient.

After 30 minutes or so, my knuckles white and my eyes watering, afraid to blink, we arrived at our mile marker. But there was no one there. We patrolled the highway eastbound and then westbound and found nothing. No sign of anything, no possessions on the road, no blood, no broken glass or torn up plastic. Our patient was a phantom, and we had risked the high winds for nothing. That happens sometimes. It’s a weird part of the job that leaves you with epinephrine coursing through your body and no outlet. Sucks a whole lot more at 4 AM, but this was mid-day. We cleared ourselves and returned home where both Maddy and Dave were relieved to no longer be at the mercy of my novice driving.

For the next year out there, I battled the wind and the elements. I worked urban and rural EMS, search and rescue, and eventually battled myself through a familiar bout with the bottle and then a DUI. I emerged from a brief stint at the Coconino County jail sober and determined to become an ED tech in the city’s exceedingly busy single hospital. I worked there for a little under a year, but music soon outearned the minimum wage of an EMT and I chased my old dream: a career in country music. I battled a lot back then. Those struggles left me with a sturdy confidence and resolve, and, of note here, an inflated ego when it comes to driving a big old box through a massive windstorm.

In December 2024, with a steady music career and a few years of full time touring under my belt, I moved to Texas, to Austin. The plan was to get off the road, put down roots, and settle down a little bit. But I couldn’t quite let go of the travelling I had grown accustomed to, that I had learned to love. No, the home I bought sat on 6 wheels.

It was a 1976 Dodge B300 motorhome converted into what the Fleetwood company called a Jamboree. It was a dreamy all-original 70s time capsule with a big fridge, a four-range stove, a full bathroom, and a cozy loft bed. Mustard, burnt orange, spinach green, wood paneling. Truly far out. I fell deeply in love with it and began working to get it back into shape. I spent the better part of that first winter meandering around the Texas Hill Country writing songs, repairing plumbing, and generally enjoying the life I dreamed of. I recall that time fondly, but before long, the road—more addiction than allure—called me back in. I made plans to head West where I knew I could always make some money, in Arizona. Back to my old stomping grounds and touring circuits.

On a humid March morning, I hit highway 290 and set my sights on West Texas. It took me 10 hours to complete the 7-hour drive (the old gal was a lumbering three speed after all—no lights and sirens here). I sputtered into Alpine exhausted. Two hours of tunes later, I shuffled out of The Ritchie and crawled straight up to bed. I parked near some tracks (everywhere in Alpine is within shouting distance from the tracks) and the trains kept me up all night. Around six in the morning I gave up. I brewed myself a pot of coffee from my speckled blue percolator and sat out on my lawn chair to drink it in a dirt parking lot as the sun came up. But with the sun comes the wind. It whipped up as it does out there and began to flick dust into my eyes. Chilly gasps of air found my skin through the gaps in my pearl snaps. My hair blew into my eyes and tickled my face. Irritated, sleep-deprived, and still undercaffeinated, I decided to hit the road. What the hell else was there to do?

The motorhome was sheltered from the elements and warm enough. Between the white noise of my tires and the engine, I hardly noticed the whistling of the wind. The hulking 440 long block motor, separated from my cab by about a half inch of plastic and a thin leather dogbox cover, roared mightily. I tuned it out; I’d grown used to the loud, low growl, but what I hadn’t yet grown used to was the handling. My rig was (and is), at risk of offending the old gal, boxy? Quadrate? Anything but aerodynamic. A breeze of any kind—hell even passing a semi in the opposite direction—would buffet me back and forth between the mayo and the mustard. 

Gradually, the wind grew from a whisper to a whine to wail. Halfway between Fort Stockton and El Paso, highway signs advised of high winds and a possible dust storm. Between the weather and that 1970s pinky finger power steering, I was struggling to stay straight. Every gust begged me to stray. I tried to revert my mindset to my ambulance driving days, far in my rearview mirror by now. I breathed slowly, stared straight, checked my surroundings constantly, and generally steadied myself. I began to feel in control when I noticed the horizon rising. 

Now being a musician, I’m used to the chasing horizons, to imaginary lines somewhere in the vague and undefined future. We pursue curvature in this job. So many of us on our perma-tours drive West til we can’t and then East til we can’t and then West til we can’t and then East til we can’t. Ad nauseum. And as an expert on the subject, I can tell you one thing: horizons usually stay still—just out of reach actually. In fact, they’re quite famous for that. On this day, however, the horizon rose to meet me. Literally. That brown, sandy edge of the world failed to disappear and instead came looming forward. My disbelief and confusion gave way to a familiar understanding: it was an incoming haboob.

For the unordained, haboobs are massive, towering dust storms that tear across the Southwest scouring everything in their path, just as they do across the empty quarter of the Arabian peninsula from which we borrowed the name. I’d been in haboobs before and knew what to do. You simply pull over, turn on your hazards, hit your lights, engage your high beams, and keep your car on. That’s how you mitigate risk, but that’s a dangerous thing in its own way because not everybody stops and visibility plummets. You risk a mighty collision from some naive motorist unclear on the proper protocols (Arizona is and may forever be a great big tourist town after all). But what else can you do? It’s the safest of two relatively unsafe options.

On this day, however, I didn’t stop. I sped calmly forward until, like a swarm of locusts, I collided with the sand. The sun seemed to die, occluded by a couple thousand feet of flying debris. Its coughing light came struggling to the road and barely reached the pavement. Immediately, I began to pass cars on the shoulder hazards sternly insisting we all stop. I can’t tell you why, but despite all the time in the world and the experience to know that it was the only thing to do, I didn’t. I think sometimes, in ways that evade language and reason, we just can’t. My problem in life has always been an inability to stop. That day was no exception. I just didn’t.

I don’t know why, but I kept driving. I was in the worst possible vehicle to drive through a sandstorm, dust pouring through every opening of the poorly sealed fuselage. Soon the parked cars gave way to minor accidents: following too closely, attempts to pass gone wrong, rear endings from distracted drivers. Folks were outside their cars, phones in hand, braced against the oppressive storm, yelling at each other, photographing their handiwork for future insurance claims.

The visibility went from 50 feet to 20. Soon the road disappeared into a sidewinding shuffle of sand across the blacktop such that a brief glint of yellow was the only hint of where forward was. The movement was dizzying. The whole world was sideways, whirling, whipping. I slowed stubbornly, but didn’t yet relent. The visibility dropped to ten feet, five feet. I slowed too, down to 10 mph and then 5. And then it all went black. Everything went an acrid black that curled into the cab. I gagged as noxious fumes seeped in.

Tires burning. 18 of them. For a moment the smoke cleared and I caught a glimpse of a semi-truck off to the side of the road, jack-knifed, splayed on its side like a beached whale gasping on some strange shore. It was roaring, flames tearing through the plywood trailer, plastic fenders sloughing off onto the road. It was a violent, beckoning fire—a psychedelic blaze lit by the dozen strobing, phasing lights of highway patrol Tahoes and ambulances and hulking quints out to handle the scene. Suddenly the whole world was an epileptic purple nightmare punctuated by plumes of smoke and streaks of dust. First responders in turnouts trudged back and forth, leaning into the wind. Cops in safety vests directed us to pass slowly, their hands waving in the swirling sand. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, but I couldn’t help but stare at the burning truck. I’d been on a hundred accidents just like this one, but was somehow horrified by the suddenness and surprise of it all.

In a second, it was over. The dust storm concealed it with just as much theater as it was revealed. I drove on, but I kept thinking about it, about running a bad call in a place like this under conditions like these. Often, bad calls you pass drudge up bad calls in your past. My mind went back to the ones I had run, suddenly triggered. I could feel my focus drift as I thumbed through the memories of gnarly motor vehicle accidents over the course of my career. Of truckers in the trauma bays. Of firefighters returning to hose down sticky asphalt. Of people who no longer looked like people.

But suddenly, the flash of hazards pierced my daze, and I returned to the road and the screaming storm. A subcompact crawled sluggishly before me. And for some reason, I felt my ire rise. I became agitated. I wanted to go, I wanted to go faster. Some insane voice urged me to pass them on this two-lane highway into the oncoming lane. There were so few cars on the roads and though it was risky, what were the odds really? Visibility was low but the road was remote. I slowed to their speed. I thought it over. I checked my left mirror. It was clear. I knew it was reckless and pointless, but I wanted to do it anyway. It was an all-to-familiar feeling. I inhaled and prepared to pass. But at the moment I began to speed into the oncoming lane, something caught my eye past my final glance at my side-view mirror.

There was a shape beyond the shoulder, beyond the fence, on the border of what I could and couldn’t see. There stood a silhouette. Now, a year later, I can see it as if it were before me now. My right foot slackened on the gas pedal and the headwind stopped me immediately, so slow was I driving. My rig and I were completely still. I pulled back into my lane. My shoulders relaxed. I drew a long slow breath in through my nose. I blinked slowly. I blinked again.

The devil stared back at me.

It was a motionless figure, looming on the edge of visibility. Arcing horns adorned a small round head atop a short, thin body. I could make out two slender legs which terminated at the sandy ground in cloven hooves. Its unwavering presence and solitude arrested me. A chill went down my back. The corners of my mouth fell and my hands dropped from the wheel. I was parked in the middle of the road, staring, just waiting to get ploughed by some truck hurtling behind me with a schedule to keep. Reluctantly I pulled over; I guided the motorhome onto the shoulder until my right tires fell off the pavement. When I looked back it was gone—the pronghorn. The pronghorn?

I sat in the driver’s seat for just a little longer. My breaths were slow and my stare was blank. For several minutes I sat in a wordless conversation with either the cosmos or myself. Or both? I soaked it in and I think I knew what it meant. I’m not a religious man, but I know a fucking sign from God when I see one. What clutched me the most was the timing, in the moment before the most destructive thing I would do all day. I felt somehow humbled, somehow haunted. Was it on its way to that blazing truck? Or to one of those souls on the highway with a thin hi-vis vest in the lowest visibility environment possible? Or had it been there waiting for me? Or was it rather there for all of us who lived oblivious to the dust we kicked up. Maybe it was there, waiting, for everyone.

My thoughts were racing, hypothesizing wildly, wandering the line between the real and preternatural. Was I supposed to pray? It had been a while. Maybe not. But I sure as hell wasn’t driving any more. Over the next half hour, as my thoughts began to slow, the image of the figure relaxed from the searing forefront of my mind. Had I made it up? All I could claim were four hours of poor sleep. I glanced over now and again to see if the figure had emerged once again. It did not.

The wind howled. My rig shook. My breathing steadied. Time passed and introspection gave way to boredom. Then, in one of the great horrors of modernity, I abandoned my thoughts, as we all often do, and felt for my phone. My feed was the same nightmare whiplash as always: the smiling faces of my friends punctuated by distant horrors, growing closer every day. It’s a miracle we can walk with the weight of our phones in our pockets.

I scrolled for hours, waiting for the storm to abate. It would be some time before I could begin driving again, and the darkness soon crept across the desert until the only light came from my screen, projecting a blue glow onto my expressionless face. I could hear the haboob moan and shriek, scraping my aluminum walls with pebbles and particles of sand. I could taste the dust in my mouth. For a moment, I snapped out of my phone’s spell and noticed the smell of exhaust. It always smelled like exhaust in the cab, but I realized I needed to kill the engine in order to preserve gas so I could leave when it all ended. I could no longer keep the weak current that charged my phone, and within half an hour it died, perhaps a mercy. I sat in the dark in the driver’s seat. No one passed me. There were no stars. Absolutely nothing.

In the pitch black of that lonely West Texas highway, I recalled an old man I once transported. We picked him up in Flagstaff and delivered him to Phoenix back in that summer of 2021 while I was cutting my teeth in the Southwest. He was an old Prescott cowboy who would head south in the winter to drive cattle, but Parkinson had knocked him out of the saddle. While we waited for the staff at our destination to receive him he told me about the old days, the old drives. He had seen everything there was to see out in the wilds of Arizona. Among the many stories he told me was one of a dust storm that spread 300 head of cattle over a wide valley between big volcanic crags. All day, he and his fellow cowhands collected the dispersed herd. Back then, events like that were rare. The desert, he told me with a squint, used to behave differently.

“The storms didn’t happen so much back then” he remembered.

They happen all the time now.

Red McAdam is a EMT’ing, singing, songwriting American who lives along the long white lines of mercy when not in Austin, Texas. The latest single from his forthcoming album, Apocalypse West Texas, is out now.