The first of September was Red, Green, and Blues, an annual labor-day celebration that takes place at the Inscription Rock Trading Post and the Ancient Way Restaurant on Highway 53 near El Morro National Monument. The restaurant managed a chili cook-off dinner, with seating under tents between the two buildings. Then the trading post put on the music, Jon Pickens and his transcendently grand blues band, the Billyhawks. About 150 people were there.

We were all looking forward to the music on the open stage beside the trading post, with the great sandstone bluff behind and the stars draped like Liberace’s diamond cloak above our heads. But it had been an on-and-off day of hard rain and hail, so the music was moved into the Old School Gallery across the street.

The band was smokin’, the old school house shook to high energy blues, and the applause and whistles of the audience, and the bounce of the dancers. Then about 10:30 we drove toward home, tired and full and stoked on the music.

Home was a drive of 17 or 18 miles, down the dark starless highway to Timberlake Road, where we turned onto the gravel and began winding through the valley and around the mesas, toward our house.

Just past the old corrals and before the spread where the Navajo man, Mr. Pino, had his fields and sheep and a few horses, Lucia pointed out her window and said, “What is that?” I glanced where she pointed, then moved the car to the edge of the road and stopped. We sat there agape, staring at a long bright yellow light at the top of the mesa, that shimmered against the black sky.

My first thought was that it was some strange manifestation of the moon, but that wasn’t possible; the sky was totally obscured by clouds and the moon was dark. Gradually it dawned on us what we were seeing. A tree was engulfed in flame, burning bottom to top like a slow wavering candle.

We stared quietly for a few minutes at the yellow flame. We’d never seen anything like it. It was an amazing sight, something that confronted us with mystery, an exotic vision that transformed our mundane drive home into a dream.

When we gradually came to ourselves and pulled back on the road, we saw two cars parked ahead. A pair of Zuni Tribal Police were leaning against their cars, watching the tree burn. The tree had been struck by lightning, they had called it in, and the firefighters would soon arrive to climb up and put it out.

In the days that followed, we talked to a few others who returned through the canyon that night and encountered the burning tree. Each of them were moved by the sight, grateful for being blessed with a glimpse outside their ordinary lives.

Lucia and I are now in a major shift in our lives, hanging in a pocket of uncertainty, thinking about a possible move. In the middle of all this we encountered the burning tree, an extraordinary gift.

We each took it as a sign that we are on the right path. We don’t know whether the future carries us to Albuquerque in an immediate rush, or if we are here for another season or two. But we believe we’re going in the right direction.