Dear Reader

I first wandered into Avebury in 1998, drawn by the ancient stone circle like so many others. I expected history, myth, maybe a quiet afternoon. What I didn’t expect was the small crowd gathered in a nearby field, all staring at something with a kind of hushed awe. Curiosity got the better of me, so I went to see what the fuss was about.
There, pressed into the crop, was a perfect circle, crisp, clean, impossibly precise. The lay of the plants was so immaculate it felt almost deliberate in a way I couldn’t quite explain. Visitors whispered theories with absolute conviction: aliens, Mother Earth, cosmic messages. At first, I let myself be swept along by the excitement. Whether it was made by people or something stranger didn’t matter to me; the mystery itself was intoxicating.
So I kept coming back to Wiltshire. Not obsessively, just enough to stay connected to whatever this phenomenon was. Each visit brought new stories: glowing lights, strange movements in the sky, encounters that left people wide‑eyed and breathless. And then, after a while, I began seeing those lights myself, odd, unexplainable, and strangely compelling. They pulled me deeper into the experience, urging me to return again and again.
But what truly made it special were the people. Over the years I met some of the kindest, most open‑hearted individuals you could hope to encounter. Opinions differed wildly, but the atmosphere was warm, curious, and welcoming.
My biggest mistake or perhaps my most important turning point, was spending too much time at the Barge Inn. You couldn’t sit quietly with a pint without overhearing the late‑night bravado of circle makers swapping stories. Eventually, I gathered the courage to interrupt them (yes, I barged in), expecting hostility or secrecy. Instead, they were friendly, generous, and surprisingly intelligent. They held nothing back. They even invited me to join them in making a circle. I resisted for a while… but resistance, as it turns out, has its limits.
From that moment on, every formation I visited became a puzzle. How did they do this? How did they achieve that? Once they explained the different styles and techniques used by various teams, the patterns began to make sense. And for the record, these lads weren’t drunken layabouts. They were creative, thoughtful, and respectful — even when others weren’t respectful toward them.
The fact that humans made the circles didn’t diminish the magic for me. There was something profoundly beautiful about art laid across the landscape, something peaceful about sitting in a formation with good people and fresh air all around.
But over the years, the atmosphere shifted. The bickering grew louder, not so much from from the makers, but from the researchers. I won’t name names, but the infighting became impossible to ignore. At one point, I tried to help the genuine truth‑seekers, and that became my second biggest mistake. I watched good researchers get bullied out of the subject entirely. Many simply walked away. I cannot lie, I did hold a touch of bitterness to the whole thing.
I’m not interested in reopening old wounds, but I will always defend myself and the people I respect. And I’ll say this plainly: those who have kept archives, whether they earned money from them or not, they also deserve respect. They preserved history. Without them, much of this story would already be lost.
Human‑made or not, crop circles still hold a strange and enduring fascination. There’s still beauty in them, still mystery, still community. And despite everything, I still enjoy them to this day. (Mike)

Avebury, August 1998 Image Steve Alexander (C) 1998 Temporary Temples