A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from somebody who had discovered a tree formation in the forests of the Veluwe National Park in the centre of the Netherlands. In other words: a crop circle, but this one was in trees instead of wheat. I saw my first tree circle in the Czech Republic in 1994. Subsequently, two tree circles were reported in Canada in 2004. But now... on the Veluwe? Suddenly it was on my doorstep!
Later that day I went for a walk in the forest behind my home, which is also a part of the same Veluwe National Park. For those who still believe in chance, here's a tough one: in the forest behind my house, I discovered - that same day - three tree circles:
I seemed to be the only one who noticed them. Other people simply walked by, without paying any attention whatsoever. I must admit that I too thought at first that this was just storm damage. But upon closer inspection, the majority of the flattened trees turned out to be bent, not broken. Just like crop circles: the stems were bent just above the ground! I only discovered a few exceptions; only very few trees were broken or uprooted.
Another interesting thing was the fact that the trees had been bent towards an imaginary centre. This centre turned out not to be a subsidence in the ground, or something else that might explain the phenomenon. It was literally an imaginary centre.
The diameter of the smallest tree circle was approximately 10 meters. The middle one was about 15 meters and the largest one was about 100 meters in diameter!
The size of the new shoots showed that the trees had gone down quite a while ago.
I wonder what kind of enormous force was the cause of this. A local twister could be excluded, for - if that had been the case - the trees would have laid in a swirl, either clockwise or anti-clockwise, and not the way they were positioned: radian-wise from the outside towards the inside. The idea of local frost or black ice was highly improbable, bearing in mind the well defined perimeters of the circles.
That night I went back to take flash photographs, some of which showed balls of lights. I walked deeper into the forest, but didn't catch any lights anywhere else.
I have reported the event to Staatsbosbeheer, the Dutch organisation that looks after our forests. The man who sent me the original e-mail also reported 'his' tree circle (positioned between two burial mounds) to the same organisation. Until today we have not received any reply yet, apart from the brief message that they will see who is responsible for this, after which we will get an official response. As soon as that response comes in, I will let you know.
Holland is quite an exciting country: most of the unusual substances have been found in Dutch crop circles, and now we turn out to have tree circles! Not bad, for such a tiny country...
5 december 2006
