If You Paid Attention to What Was Around You, You Wouldn't Be Thinking Someone Was Trying to Get into Your Tent

Musings on Noise #5

Related to "Reading the Woods" -
When you arrive at your campsite, you should take a few minutes to observe your environment and figure out how things got there. For example, some clues to notice:
-- an amazing overabundance of twigs and small branches that have fallen to the ground
-- the ground is carpeted with leaves (along with those twigs and branches mentioned above)
-- when leaves fall to the ground - in a few days - they die. Dead leaves are noisy leaves

Some other useful things about nature to remember:
-- Branches don't fall to the ground just during the daylight hours of, say 9-5. They fall to the ground All. The. Time. Including during the middle of the night.
-- Leaves fall from the trees all during the night too.
-- If the weather forecast calls for a front to come through, that means a breeze. A breeze that will blow dead (aka noisy) leaves around.

Knowing all that -
When you hear strange unknown noises during the night, likely your campsite is not being invaded by a small army of unknown animals/creatures. The logical assessment is that the noise is dead leaves skittering across the gravel tent pad; the snapping sound is a branch breaking and falling; the "thud" on your tent are leaves and twigs; and no one is trying to get into your tent -- that's the wind rustling the tent fly.