June 12, 2005, mid-afternoon, CST. Bored with a transcontinental flight, I took out my digital camera and started snapping a few photos of the earth’s surface over central Minnesota, some 7 miles below---I thought perhaps they’d make nice desktops or screen-savers for my computer. Predictably, the view was filled with green and brown blocks of cultivated farmland.

Then I noticed an odd design standing out from the rest of the monotonous countryside and I zoomed in on it (first pic). Note that the tiny little clusters of white objects are entire farm complexes, so the design you’re seeing is maybe a half-mile square, maybe more, but I’m just guessing.

A moment later, I spied a larger design and zoomed in on that one, as well (second pic). Following the second shot, I realized that we were passing over a large area of bizarre surface designs, so I zoomed out to capture a wider area (pics 3 & 4).

Maybe I just haven’t been observant in the past, but I haven’t seen crop designs like this before---I don’t know if it’s some novel and more efficient approach to tilling and cultivating the soil, but I do know that it looks a hell of a lot like primitive pictographs on a scale to rival the Nazca desert images in Peru.

Which causes me to wonder about the Nazca images now---could it be that they were they crop-related designs, as well?

--Charles Austin Miller