And new events sprung up in cities and in environments ranging from heavily wooded forests to pristine urban beaches.
Everyone was confident that Marysville wouldn't, couldn't burn, but there it was – the high wooded hill behind the Donovans' house ablaze.
White House officials have been anxious to stress that the mixture of princes and senior ministers attending in their absence when the summit moves to the wooded presidential retreat at Camp David on Thursday will be more than capable of completing the agenda of "modernising and deepening security cooperation" between the US and GCC countries.
It is a place of contrasts, wooded and farmed, but with a rugged east-facing coastline where you can watch the oil rigs being tugged in for servicing from the North Sea.
Not far from the village of Killiecrankie in the Scottish Highlands, there is a densely wooded gorge through which the River Garry rushes.
Finca Buen Vino, Las Marinas, (fincabuenvino.com, doubles from €120 B&B, cottages from €500 per week, sleep up to four) offers either B&B in an atmospheric country-house or self-catering cottages in the estate's wooded grounds.
We were moving down a dirt track, in the rain, watching the villages roll past, a line of enticing, wooded mountains to the right, wondering where to stop to buy some food for lunch and chatting about what it would be like to be the children waving at us as we passed.
It would certainly be an incongruous scene for an energy boom, in the lightly wooded commuter belt countryside a few miles from Gatwick's perimeter, but with the flight paths pointing elsewhere, leaving the local horses and goats, even a field of llamas, to graze in peace.
Set above a wooded valley, this has the advantage of seclusion (at night you can play "spot the houselight"), while being a 20-minute walk downhill to the Old Ferry Inn at Bodinnick and a slap-up Sunday roast.
On a wooded hill filled with birds, and views overlooking the spa town of Vals les Bains, this ornate 19th-century château has been restored to former glory by Éric and Marie-Antoinette.
Our familiar word forest designates not only a wooded region, but also an area of land set aside for hunting – as those who have walked through the treeless "forests" of Fisherfield and Corrour in Scotland will know.
