near Avebury Manor

near Avebury Manor

walking through a crop circle

as it starts to rain 

Last night we went to the Crop Circle Gallery just south of the train tracks to watch a documentary: "Thrive: What on Earth Will It Take?" Part of the sleuthing producer Forest Gamble takes us on includes crop circles. We are sitting in a small room surrounded by photographs of the beautiful graphics that appear in crops all over the world, especially in England. While we wait for the video to play, I scan the aerial photographs, arranged by year, until my eyes come to rest on one that appeared near Avebury Manor in July 2008. It's actually two circles, created about a week apart, that appear to depict our solar system and another planet. And then I remember; I was there.
          We have just finished walking around the amazing Avebury ring, the oldest stone ring known to be in existence anywhere in the world. Created between 2600 and 2500 BC, it is older than Stonehenge. As we are driving away, I spot some people out in the middle of a wheat field and I immediately think it must be a crop circle. Sure enough, when we join the people in one of the flattened areas, we see circles and lines running off in all directions. The circle is so huge that it's hard to figure out what the design is from ground level. The area feels charged with energy, yet serene at the same time. I want to sit on the carefully laid-down wheat and meditate, but It's starting to rain and we have miles to go to our next stop. Reluctantly, I leave the magic space, carrying with me the memory of my first and only experience of a crop circle.
          As we drive away, I ponder the conjunction of the ancient stone circle and the out-of-this-world crop circle, both created by who knows who, and I wonder, what on Earth will it take for us to fathom these mysteries?

long gray blades slowly

long gray blades slowly 

revolving in the sunset,

reaping the wind

East of the Mississippi near Bishop Hill, we pass a huge wind farm, hundreds of giant turbines spread out for miles south of the interstate highway, slowly revolving like a troupe of ballerinas all doing arabesque pirouettes. Like a three-bladed scythe, the long blades reap wind instead of grass. The kinetic energy garnered from the motion of the wind is converted into mechanical energy, which is then used to produce electricity, an alternative to coal-generated electricity. Seeing all these turbines reminds me of the wind farms we saw in many parts of the UK, like this one in Cumbria. Of course, as with anything new, controversy blows hot around wind farms, ranging from spoiling the view to the environmental impact of producing massive amounts of concrete for the footings. As a child, I remember driving from St. Louis to grandma's house in southern Illinois past mile after mile of oil derricks bobbing up and down like demented ducks, and no one objected to spoiling the view in order to suck oil out of the ground, or to the endless lines of railroad cars carrying coal from the mines out west to the cities out east.

Avebury Circle

Avebury Circle –

one white sheep sleeps with her back

against the warm stone

Avebury henge is magical in many ways. The massive stone circles are oriented to the rising moon. The monoliths alternate between tall thin stones and short squat ones. Sheep grazing on the downs seem drawn to the stones, perhaps just for the shelter they afford or perhaps for the powerful energy they radiate.