In our years...hmmm 97 to now..7 years of living on the road, mostly staying at the most remote locations we can find, I have developed a ritual scan of a prospective site.

The obvious things like broken limb in trees, or trees with a weak foundation are obvious. The one that almost got us was more complex.

We were in Maine “upcountry” as they say, and found a nice spot along a little stream. As usual I set out to check the area. Looked great. Wide expanse along the stream, good airflow so the bugs would not be bad and a rather nice bald hill behind us to block any really strong winds. We were there for about an hour, doing our normal things when we finally got time to walk up to the top of the hill for a “peek around”.

Turns out that the hill was a breakaway dam for a spillway on a very large lake. If there would be a heavy rain, the hill would dissolve and the excess water would fill our nice valley in seconds.

No signs, no warnings, but that of course is normal in Maine. Needless to say we moved. It rained a lot that night. We did not go back to check, although I doubt it rained enough to spring the dam.