Category: Full-time

Most people looking for portable hammock stands are interested in camping. But why limit it? All the recent advances in hammock camping comfort and popularity have more people embracing hammocks as full-time beds, as people in the American tropics have for centuries.

Hanging hammocks indoors requires more expertise, commitment, or permission than many people can bring to the task. Placing wall hooks is clean and simple in some cases, but difficult, dangerous, or impossible in others. Meanwhile, stands suitable for indoor use tend either to have huge footprints, or else put their supports far too low or close to support full-size sleeping hammocks far enough off the floor for ease of entry, sitting, and exit.

If a stand’s hanging points aren’t at least about 72 inches high and 132 inches apart (6′, 11′; 1.8M, 3.3M), it’s just too small for a compelling adult bed replacement. That’s just about every one available cheap on Amazon, at Walmart, etc. It’s almost as if they think hammocks are just for lounging!

Our Tensa4 stand fits in the footprint of a twin bed with room left over, the high ends being wider. Apart from its portability packed, this means it deploys where no other stand we know of will. Shown in the photo is a 12′ Colombian cotton hammock with underquilt for Oregon’s cool climate, hung properly with foot end higher than head for flattest lay, another detail most stands don’t accommodate.

It’s far more comfortable than any mattress costing several times as much as stand and hammock together. Unlike a mattress, it’s free of organohalogen flame retardants, formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds, and doesn’t contribute to the problem of about 20 million of them annually clogging up landfills after they become too disgusting. That’s right: a hammock can be cleansed of mites, mildew, and bodily fluid stains, unlike even the lumpiest vegan organic cotton futon. But mainly, the sleep is heavenly. Experience and science align.

Tensa Outdoor will continue to advance the best stands for camping, while sidestepping toward the ultimately more meaningful goal of packaging a compelling mattress alternative, for the third of your life you spend in bed.

Our Tensa4 hammock stand came about from hammock hanging needs that go way beyond camping, but cover full-time hangers like me. I developed the stand to avoid ever needing to try to sleep in a bed again, such as when staying in hotels. I’ve succeeded, with Cheryl’s expert help, and Tensa Outdoor has come together to help others enjoy the same freedom.

The photo above shows a Tensa4 set up on a full bed, one of two in a cramped motel room. The hammock is an insulated LaSiesta Colibri (no affiliation, just a simple cheap all-in-one). I was attending a wedding on the coast, 2 nights. The first night, I attempted to sleep in the bed. As usual I slept terribly, so spoiled have I become by a hammock as bed at home. This is not the first time I’ve set up a Tensa4 in a motel room, but the previous night may well represent the last time I ever attempt to do without. I’m free now.

This stand packs and sets up just about anywhere, well below carry-on luggage dimensions, with no need to clear a space, drive anchors into anything, tie to trees or posts well-spaced, or even create trip hazards. It is truly unique in these respects, and we’re thrilled to bring it to market.

I first camped in a hammock in 2006. I liked it better than a tent and pad, but that’s as far as it went then. I went back to my bed at home, and continued to toss and turn, and to suffer back and neck pains, as I had all my life. Then in 2010 I took an 11-day bikepacking trip down the Pacific coast with my hammock. The trip was life-changing in many ways, among the simplest of which is that after several nights, I noticed my back pains went away completely. I slept like a baby every night on that trip, with sweet lucid dreams of holding my body in the cup of my hand, my hand become the hammock, in an infinite recursion of older me to younger me, oversoul to little me. I feel well taken care of in a hammock, the caretakers being me, an unknown Pre-Columbian genius likely from the Caribbean, and the universe dynamically balancing tensile and gravitational forces, cool in summer and warm with quilts hung below the rest of the year.

There is something womblike and protective about a hammock missing in beds, profoundly regenerative, like reconnecting to some universal umbilicus. Yes, I often sleep on my side in fetal position in a hammock, which has now been almost every night for 5 years. I’m never going back to a bed if I can help it.

Hammocks for camping are becoming hugely popular, but a constant limiter of their adoption is the scarcity of suitable trees in some otherwise wonderful places to camp. What’s more, many places with trees prohibit hanging hammocks, for reasons good and bad. These facts make hammocks less reliable as bedding choices than tents and pads. Tensa Outdoor is about fixing this, letting people hang truly anywhere, inside or out, whether full time at home or on the go.

Now, if ever I’m hospitalized, do you think they’ll let me set up in the ward, so I can rest?