This might seem like a no-brainer, and if you are a hard-core tripper and you are insulted by my attempt at making a tip out of what you consider common sense, hold off a moment captain I-can-pitch-a-tent-with-my-feet. You can’t tell me that you have never seen a moss covered hollow, surrounded by some trees (or something similar) and thought to yourself Now that looks comfy. I’d be nice and comfy in there. Well, you would be. But not if it rained.
Depressions catch water. And when water collects, it gets into things. Like your tent. I don’t care if you have a $800 dollar tent from mountain hardware, with a bazillion-denier nylon bottom with super-duper water proof coating. If you are sleeping in a pool of water, it WILL make it into your tent. It could be possible that all that moss is sitting on top of a foot of sand and all that water will just drain away. But if you are in Ontario, or any other place where there is often nothing under that moss but shield rock, the water just collects and soon you are trying to heat your own bath.
So stay away from dents, just to be sure. Look, if you can, for a place sheltered by trees with an outcrop of rock on the windward side, with the ground gradually sloping away from it. No wind, no water.
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