Abandoned Automobiles

The Nevada National Guard is cleaning up the area south-east of Reno. Their CH-47’s Chinook helicopters are heard thumping loudly, lift ing the rusting bodies of abandoned automobiles skyward, hauling them away.

Considered blights, most people want them gone, never to return. They are scrap, garbage, waste — man-made and unsightly, a danger to the panoramic beauty of a mornings’ walk or evening hike.

Yet, isn’t it odd that from time-to-time a large, barely sea-worthy hulk of a ship’s dynamited, sunk to create a man made-reef for the aquatic life. The abandon vehicle that dots the desert landscape are the same thing.

They’re home to field mice, snakes, spiders and their cousin the scorpion, among other wildlife. And if you sit patiently, quietly watching — you’ll learn both the hawk and the coyote often find a meal inside the oxidizing metal frames.

Like a man-made reef, abandoned automobiles are never left unoccupied — nature always fills the empty spaces.