I'm pretty early into the game and have completed just enough of the MQ to allow for the appearance of dragons. I started off exploring and decided to walk to the southeast corner of the map, I believe the town is Riften? Anyway, it has been a couple of days now and I'm still not there because of all the distractions along the way. Great fun. I noticed that, for the most part, when I completed my exploration of a site, it became marked as "cleared". The only exception so far has been this small site with a lone witch and a shack of sorts. Maybe it was called witchmist grove or something like that. There was an unlocked chest outside and some odds and ends inside but nothing else remarkable about it. When I left the site I noticed that it wasn't marked "cleared" on my map, so I went back for a more thourough exploration but didn't find anything. Confused, I tried to look it up online and found a reference to a side quest and I think a wedding ring as loot in an expert locked chest that the witch was guarding. My question is this, with the exception of towns and cities, do all other sites qualify to be "cleared" or are there other exceptions? Also, I have a couple of quest items in my inventory (I know that becasue I can't drop or sell them) but I don't have the wedding ring. Does that mean I didn't find that expert locked chest and hence the site wasn't cleared or does it mean that the quest should be triggered first before I could find a ring? Anyone familiar with this witchmist grove? Bugging the crap out of me.

"Cleared" mens that you have killed all enemies there lets say camp skyrim has 5-7 bandits and mayby a leader. You need to kill them all once to get that camp "Cleared".

Witchmist Grove is propably part of some quest, since there is that weirdo granny Moira wich standin infront of her house. She will not attack if u dont attack so very likely a quest place.

There are some other places that will not be marked as "Cleared" such as towns (example riverwood), or farms, cities, stone things (13 of them; warrior, mage, thief, lover, serpent etc) and some random good to see-places. I dont remember if military camps can be "Cleared".
:spotted owl: :spotted owl:

I think it is not possible to get Cleared status for this place (Witchmist Grove)...or maybe I don't know all quests related to this place-but the most important is "A Night To Remember"

Anyone lucky to see this location "Cleared" on the map?

There is a mention "Clearable:Yes" in uesp skyrim wiki but I'm not sure if the information is true.