What northerners have to do...

... to hang out in a hammock...

when there is no tree close enough to another to put up a hammock.

So, as an early birthday present for my prime year, Compa got me a hammock stand. It arrived in a box so demolished that we had to take everything out to make sure it all had arrived intact. A bit banged up but it will do.

I bought the hammock in the photo in 1994 at the mercado central close to the Catedral Metropolitano in San Salvador and have never used it until today when I tried it out. It will do just fine.


While in El Salvador, I got a chance to rest some in a hammock at the bishop's house. There, the hammock is in an enclosed patio with all manner of happy plants, ferns with fronds so long that they touch the ground even though they hang four and a half feet up, and fruit trees. Somehow, setting up the hammock on the patio at the rectory where there is relatively little privacy is not quite the same.

Come summer, I will move the stand out into the yard under the shade of the large maple tree (until I get hit by bird or squirrel guano).

Still, I can see that hammock coming into use on a Sunday afternoon when I have polished off the New York Times.