In Brief:
When Doug Bower and his co-conspirator Dave Chorley first created a representation of a " flying saucer nest" in a wheat field in Wiltshire, England, in 1976, they could not have foreseen that their work would become a cultural phenomenon.. At around the same time in England, the Wiltshire town of Warminster became a center of UFO-seeking "sky watches" and gave birth to its own rumors of crop circles, or "saucer nests. It was such legends that Bower had in mind when, over a drink one evening in 1976, he suggested to his pal Chorley: In southern England, which sees most activity, circle-makers tend to concentrate on canola, barley and wheat. Since Bower and Chorley's circles appeared, the geometric designs have escalated in scale and complexity, as each year teams of anonymous circle-makers lay honey traps for New Age tourists.. Wiltshire is the home of Stonehenge and an even more extensive stone circle in the village of Avebury. And so, the annual appearance of ever more complex patterns in the wheat fields of southern England is taken by "croppies"-the devotees who look beyond any prosaic solution for deeper explanations-as signs and wonders and prophecies. Doug Bower now tells friends that he wishes he had kept quiet and continued his nocturnal jaunts in secret.
