Hammocks and the tropics go together like tacos and more tacos. Hammocks were born in the tropics. Hammocks on a beach are as ideal, iconic, romantic, and often elusively unrealistic as driving a convertible sports car on a beautiful, empty, twisty country road.
You can’t always get what you want.
The sad truth is that fewer and fewer popular tropical travel destinations accommodate hammocks well or at all, at least close to the water. Either trees are absent, too small, or protected by regulation from the damage that visitors inflict with poor hanging practices. Hanging from shallow-rooted palms or under coconuts can even be deadly. Hammocks are not allowed to be hung from trees in Dry Tortugas National Park, for instance, only a few hundred miles from where Columbus found the Taino people enjoying hamacas as their regular beds.
That’s why customer Matt S. and his girlfriend were “the envy of most of the other campers” with their Tensa4 stand, which happens to pack to carry-on size:
Tensa Outdoor partner Cheryl is a passionate scuba diver and an every-night hammock sleeper. She recently enjoyed a 15-day diving trip in Baja California with her husband. In four of the five places they stayed, both outdoors and in, hanging hammocks would have been impossible without Tensa4, either for lack of hanging points or by regulation. With the stand, she was able to sleep every night as she is accustomed, in unmatched coolness and comfort.
On the return leg, in Joshua Tree National Park, she quickly rigged up a novel hammock chair stand she dubs Tensa3, which is simply 3/4 a Tensa4. When the light is just right, the pyramid focuses the cosmic rays to decalcify her pineal gland, right smack dab in the middle:
Could you use such an arrangement to field dress hunting quarry? Suspend a cauldron over a fire? Frame a lavvu or tipi-style shelter? Prop up … most anything? Of course. Poles predate and surpass the wheel in general usefulness.
But if you try sometime you find
You get what you need
THOUSAND TRAIL CAMPING CLUB FORBIDS THE USE OF HAMMOCKS THAT ARE HUNG FROM THEIR TREES BECAUSE THE SIERRA CLUB TOLD THEM THAT IT “HURTS” THE TREES.