Trying to befriend hammocks
The last couple of years hammock camping has become very popular, and I am one of the many people who has tried it out over the last two years.
On April 12th 2020 I went on my first ever hammock camping trip. My mum and I decided to hike to the highest point in our municipality, a hill named Oksla. The forecast predicted clear skies, which was fortunate as we did not have any tarps. On the flipside it also predicted temperatures down towards 0 degrees Celsius and heavy winds. So not necessarily the best conditions for going hammock camping for the first time. After setting up camp, eating some dinner and discovering that getting in and out of a hammock can be a quite strenuous, but funny, experience. We tried to go to sleep.
In the morning when I asked my mum if she had a good night’s sleep, she summed up the experience quite nicely with the answer: “Yes, several times.” Which was a statement I could agree with. It’s not that I didn’t necessarily sleep well. I just slept well for very short amounts of time. I kept waking up to be able to change sleeping position and wasn’t able to find any position where I didn’t end up laying in a serious banana shape. So the overall sleeping experience, even if I did have some moments where I slept well, wasn’t the best.
Even after not having had the best night of sleep the first time around, I was, somehow, not deterred from trying again. A few weeks after the first try I decided the weather was too nice to keep studying inside, so I packed my bag and headed out to a spot not to far from my parents home and set up camp. The night proceeded in a similar fashion to the previous hammock camping attempt, only this time there were mosquitoes disturbing my sleep as well. I did however discover that the hammock made for a comfortable “chair” when I was sitting with my legs over the edge and reading in the morning.
After this it ended up being more than a year before I went for another hammock camping trip. This time together with my cousin. The weather was perfect and the company even better. After a nice evening with good food, long conversations and a few acrobatic manoeuvres from my cousin who managed to involuntarily somersault out of her hammock when trying to get in it, we went to sleep. The night passes slightly more comfortably than my previous attempts at sleeping in a hammock, but I still woke up quite stiff and not feeling entirely rested.
At this point most people would probably have given up on this and decided that hammock camping wasn’t for them. And I’m not going to lie, I was starting to think that maybe this thing just wasn’t for me. Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of hammock camping, and I want to like hammock camping. But so far, I have not had a properly good night’s sleep in a hammock. Or, that was until a few weeks ago, nearly a year after the trip with my cousin, when I decided to pack my bag late one evening for a night outside.
I don’t know if I did something different with the setup or if it was because I was using a different hammock, but somehow I managed to avoid the “banana bend” and was able to find a almost flat sleeping position. Which for someone like me, who usually sleeps on my stomach or on the side, is imperative for a good night’s sleep. And for the first time ever I actually sleep comfortably in a hammock and woke up well rested. So maybe this attempt at “befriending” hammocks isn’t as futile as I was starting to think. More “experiments” will need to be conducted 😉
