Punctuation Matters

While writing my last post, I came across another, better example of a garden-path sentence:

"Shielding my eyes from the blast of debris I caught the power of the churning wheels swept up a filthy halo of water and dirt."

What do you think this sentence means? For the past several hours, I thought it had this structure:

Shielding my eyes from the blast of debris[,] I caught[V1] the power of the churning wheels swept[V2] up a filthy halo of water and dirt.

This doesn't make any sense of course since there are two verbs in the main clause, which is ungrammatical. I thought maybe the writer was just being sloppy, but then just now this came to me:

Shielding my eyes from the blast of debris I caught[,] the power of the churning wheels swept up a filthy halo of water and dirt.

Lesson? Commas are your best friend.