"They're trying to kill us!" Tree retaliation at Village Creek State Park

We set up camp at Village Creek State Park in Arkansas, after experiencing an online booking SNAFU outside of Memphis. The experience was a pleasant surprise. We enjoyed the peace and quiet of our forested campsite, hikes on the nature trails, and games of tennis. However, not everything was sunshine and butterflies. We had been keeping a close eye on the weather as soon as we arrived. We follow Live Storm Chasers on Facebook, and they put out a supercell composite that made us nervous.

The composite showed the greatest risk of severe weather, possibly up to EF-2 tornadoes, in the red. The entire state of Arkansas was covered. Our weather apps were only predicting rain, but we knew that the forecast could change as the dates neared.

Every day at Village Creek State Park felt like the calm before the storm. The skies were clear and blue, and the birds and butterflies celebrated the Spring Equinox. Bees pollinated the budding trees. Little green leaves began forming on the barren branches.

We took note of the storm protocol at the park. We were not far from the bathhouse, which would serve as a storm shelter if needed. We took photos of the posters that listed the local radio stations, so that we could stay updated. We even ran to the store to get provisions, including an emergency FM radio. We didn't have cell service at the park, so if our satellite went out, we wouldn't have internet access. The local radio stations might be our only source of information.

We also faced the decision of whether we should stay at the campground or leave. This is always a tricky one, especially when the forecast is iffy. We don't want to be paranoid, but we also know it's better to be safe than sorry. We faced a similar situation last year in Utah, and deciding to stay ended up being the wrong choice. What if history repeated itself again?

We tried to think logically. The supercell composite was just that - a composite. An educated guess that states, if there were to be tornadoes, this is where the fronts would meet. However, all of our weather apps had not budged. We would be getting rain and some wind. If for whatever reason a more severe storm did occur, we were ready to run to the bathhouse.

Wind gusts were not supposed to exceed 55mph, which is far less than we've endured in the past. Our biggest obstacle would be the trees. We were surrounded by them, and we noticed that even moderate gusts would sometimes blow branches down into our site. Just small ones, no more than a couple of inches in diameter. When we went on our guided hike on the Big Ben Trail, our guide Megan told us about the different layers of soil at the park. The top layer is very soft. We asked her if this is one of the reasons why the trees aren't structurally sound. She said yes. We had noticed several trees that had exposed roots, hollowed trunks, or had been cut down by the park staff. It reminded us of our home-base in Massachusetts, where many of the trees in town have needed to be removed in order to prevent damage during storms. Damage still occurs in the area often, with tons of power outages and even trees falling on the houses. Whenever we're parked there and a storm rolls in, we face the decision to stay in the rig or go inside the house. We have dealt with a lot of tree drama there, including a Nor 'Easter and a lightning strike that compromised two of the trees next to the RV. Perhaps these experiences have desensitized us. We've always been safe and Buggy has never been hit by a fallen tree. Any branches that have fallen just bounced right off him. He's an aluminum tank.

We had many conversations that ended up leading to the same conclusion: "If a tree does fall on us, we don't think it would be big enough to totally decimate the trailer, and so we will most likely be safe." At the end of the day, that's all we could go on. We couldn't pack up and move somewhere that would be out of the storm vicinity, nor could we go far enough for trees and soft soil to not be a problem. No one can predict that a tree will fall in site 3, or 5, or 12, or any site at all! No one can predict if a tree will fall in the park or in some other park. It's out of our hands. In fact, we didn't just stick around for the storm. We even extended our stay an extra day. We figured that would give us some leeway in case the winds hadn't died down yet, or if God forbid, we needed to clean up any damage.

The immediate forecast showed the wind picking up throughout the day on Monday (March 25) and the rain starting around 4PM. The Live Storm Chaser forecast had shifted south, with the biggest threat of tornadoes now down in Louisiana and Mississippi. Our area was in the margins (green area).

That afternoon was when we decided to go buy our FM radio and other provisions. We wanted to be full on gas and back at our campsite before the downpours, just in case. Everything was going smoothly until we returned to the campground.

We were driving down the park entrance road, past the visitor center. Just before we were about to turn toward the campground, we heard a huge CRACK followed by a BOOM! Anthony stopped the truck and said, "A tree just fell!" He could see it in his side mirror. He turned the angle of the truck so we could both see it, and sure enough, a huge tree was now sprawled across the road. It fell about 3 seconds after we had passed it.

It took us a moment for reality to sink in and to avoid all the "what ifs." What if we had been under that tree? What if we were a couple minutes later coming into the park? Now the only way in was blocked. No one could enter and no one could leave. The tree's trunk was at least 3 feet in diameter, but the part that would have hit us was the top, where the branches dispersed. If any one of those branches came though the windshield, we could have been seriously hurt.

We pulled into the visitor center parking lot and went in to alert them that the road was now blocked. Then we went back to our site. Even if we had wanted to leave, we couldn't now!

Literally the day before, we stood in that very spot, as Megan told us about the erosion and soft soil. Now the area was destroyed. Fortunately, the stairway down to the trail was still intact. Those stairs had been newly built and it would have been a shame for them to get damaged.

That night, we decided to tag-team our sleep, which we've done before so that one of us is always up to monitor the weather. Nicole takes the late shift and Anthony gets up early for the dawn shift. We both knew that the weather wasn't actually that bad. The gusts never seemed to blow higher than 40mph. But we also had witnessed just how easily the trees could come down. We both half expected to hear a bang on our roof at some point during the night.

But, the winds died down and the rain stopped just before 1AM. The wind advisory expired. Nicole decided to end her night watch and turn in.

The night progressed as normal. We both got relatively good sleep until Lily woke us up at 5AM, as she tends to do when she's on Central Time. We gave her some sink water, and Anthony settled into the chair with Lily on his lap so they could snooze the remaining hour or two. It was a typical morning.

A few minutes later, we heard the BANG, almost as though our hours of worrying about it manifested it into reality. As if nothing can phase us anymore, these were our literal reactions:

Nicole (calling groggily from the bedroom): What the hell?!
Anthony: We're fine. Hang on.........oop, there is leaking.

As we woke up, we tried to piece together what had happened. It was still dark out, so we couldn't check the roof yet, but we quickly went outside to see what we were dealing with. It was bigger than a branch and smaller than a tree. We have since called it the bough. Because we couldn't see much in the dark and we feared that we'd get hit if we stayed outside, we had to just theorize about what was causing the leaking. Nothing had come through the ceiling, so we thought maybe it busted a seam because the water was trickling down the wall and ramp door. It stopped fairly quickly because it was only the pooled rainwater on the roof. The rain had stopped hours before and no more was in the forecast.

We stayed up waiting for the sun to rise, so we could get the ladder out and do a more thorough assessment. Anthony immediately noticed a hole in one of our solar panels, and we hoped that maybe the panel took the brunt of the force, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. The bough pierced through the panel and also made a hole in the roof beneath it. The hole was about the size of Anthony's hand. The silver lining was that it only went through the top sheet of aluminum. That's why we didn't see a branch jutting through our ceiling. That's also why the water leaked down the wall and ramp door; it traveled into the hole and ran its way over to the back corner of our rig.

We made a gameplan to clean out the debris and temporarily patch the hole with duct tape and roof sealant. Only before we did that, we had to deal with a more urgent matter.

Part of the tree branch was still above the rig, dangling on another branch. It looked fairly well hooked, but we weren't taking any chances. We needed to move. Sporadic wind gusts were still blowing, and we would kick ourselves if one of them caused the branch to fall on our other solar panel. Frankly, we were surprised that that one seems unscathed, given that it also got hit (we will need to test the voltage to make sure).

At first we thought we'd need to change sites, but when we examined the positioning of the branch, we thought it was unlikely that it would fall anywhere but straight down, if at all. We had a long enough site to pull forward about 10 feet, far enough to be out of the way. If we did that, we weren't sure if our truck would still fit. We called the office and told them that a branch fell on our roof and asked if we could park for the day in one of the vacant sites next to us. They said no. That's correct. We had been there for 9 days, had spoken to them multiple times, had alerted them to the downed tree the day before, and on that morning, we were one of three campers in the loop, leaving a whopping 38 sites open. They would not let us park the truck in one of the vacant spots next to us. If someone had reserved the spot then we would understand, but no one came in that day. They told us we could park at the bathhouse, but we would want the truck nearby so we could unload supplies easily. We solved the issue by making sure we were over enough in our site that our truck could still fit next to us, but this customer service left a bad taste in our mouths. The lady also said she would inform maintenance staff to come and look at the dangling branch, but no one came out. Granted, they did have bigger fish to fry, given that they had a massive tree to chop up on the entrance road.

Once we finished our grand maneuver, we got to patching. We would need to wait until the next morning to do a leak test because the sealant needed to dry. In the meantime, we contacted our insurance company, our solar contractor, and ATC to get the ball rolling on what we feared would be a long road of repairs.

We did some additional checks to make sure the water leakage didn't ruin any wiring underneath our roof, namely our left blinker and our backup camera. Everything seemed to be working.

Meanwhile, in the land of the near miss, the tree had been moved from the road and now a maintenance worker was using the chainsaw to chop the rest of it up. The pile of mulch it created was massive, and that wasn't even all of it! Even the next day we could still see pieces of the branches scattered all across the road. We couldn't believe that all that wood almost came down on our truck.

We were curious if any other trees fell in the campground, so when we deemed it safe enough to do so, we took a walk around the loop. A few sizeable branches had fallen, one landing on a picnic table in a vacant site, but ours was the worst. Just like we said, we can't predict which trees will fall where. We also noticed an entire tree that had fallen into the creek behind our site. The day before, it was still standing, as shown in the background of one of Nicole's recordings for work (ironically, a video about how wind affects her Harpscape recordings).

On our guided hike of the Big Ben Trail, we learned about Ben, the tree that was the namesake of the trail, that died because too many people carved their names and initials into it, exposing it to infection. Given that the largest tree that fell during this storm was at the Big Ben Trailhead, we are hypothesizing that the trees are angry and staged a coup. We're calling it the treetaliation. From a more realistic, geographical standpoint, this region of Arkansas sees a lot of erosion, and it does not bode well for the integrity of the trees that grow here. Even with all of this knowledge ahead of time, we ended up making a decision that ultimately did not work in our favor. Now all we could do was look ahead. We would pack up for our travel day the next day, and before we leave, do our leak test to ensure the patch was holding tight. If it was, we could continue our travels as planned. If it wasn't, we would need to go to plan B, which was figuring out a different patch system before the next rainstorm hit.