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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Circles Are Another One of the Little Mysteries of Life

By Rory Mcclannahan
Mountain View Telegraph
      Some things are hard to explain. We see with our eyes and use our knowledge and experience to come up with an answer, but sometimes none is forthcoming.
    That's the way Ken and Connie Stokely have been feeling since Monday morning when they awoke to find five 20-foot circles imprinted into the ground in the horse arena at their Edgewood home. Some things are clear about the marks: Each one has three circles of differing sizes, there appear to be tire marks that made the circles, they are the same size but seem to be randomly placed in the arena, and there doesn't seem to be any explanation as to how they were made or who put them there.
    "In the back of my mind I get to thinking that someone is playing a prank on us," Ken said. "I just don't know how they did it."
    Ken explained that he had some guys over to clean out the 120-foot by 90-foot arena on Saturday. When they left, Ken said, they claimed there weren't any circles. Ken was out of town over the weekend and Connie says that the only weird thing to happen was when one of their dogs awoke in the middle of the night and looked out the bedroom window to the arena. But the dog didn't bark or pitch the same sort of fit it did when a newspaper editor walked up to the house in the middle of the day. No one at the house walked out to the arena until Monday when Ken said he found the circles.
    He talked to his crew, Connie took pictures and showed co-workers. Most folks utter the letters U-F-O, but neither Connie nor Ken really believe that little green men have landed in the horse arena of their modest Edgewood spread.
    "I'm not saying there's not UFO's out there," Ken says, "but I'm not saying that's what this is. We just don't know what did this and no one else can tell us either."
    Several years ago, a friend of mine had gone hiking in the Sandias and came back with a rock he had found. The rock, which was about as big as his head, was lightly colored and covered with concave pockmarks.
    My friend, who told me his experience as I looked at the rock on his mantle, thought he had found a meteor rock that had been scarred by the intense heat of its journey from space through the atmosphere and to the Sandias. Convinced that he had found something special, he took his rock to the geology department at the University of New Mexico, where some old professor confirmed what the rock was.
    It was a salt lick.
    Every day, we encounter things that without experience, we'd have no idea what they are. I had a centipede, for instance, take refuge in my office the other day. I marveled as I looked at its curled body and undulating legs that if I hadn't known it was a centipede it could have just as well been from another planet. Or look at a lobster, for crying out loud! Talk about a space creature.
    I don't know what made the circles in the Stokelys' horse arena. The Stokelys don't either. Could it have been a tractor? I suppose, but I don't see how. Maybe it was some other farm implement. My first thought was of one of those giant farm sprinklers that go in a giant circle. But that's just a guess.
    Ken and Connie have dragged me into this great mystery and now I'm dragging all of you into it as well. So study the photo here and give me a call or send me an e-mail if you have any ideas.
    And if it was little green men, just keep it to yourselves.
    Contact Rory McClannahan at 823-7102 or online at editor@mvtelegraph.com.>   

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