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HOW TO ENJOY A HAMMOCK
by Ranger Joseph Nemec

Are there mosquitoes there?  What about  snakes?  Yes, they are there, and so are scorpions, big spiders, chiggers and poisonwood trees.  Yet despite all of these the hammock is an enchanting place. 

We perceive it, and exist with our immediate environment, through our five senses.  The most important is vision through which we receive the rest of our information.  but sense of touch is what we are concerned with most while visiting the hammock.  The organ of touch is what we are concerned with most while visiting the hammock.  The organ of touch is skin, and this is the place where we interact with all that is not pleasant in the hammock.  Mosquitoes suck our blood through it, chiggers burrow into it, scorpions sting it, and the poisonwood sap irritates it.  Be careful unless you know what it is.  DO NOT TOUCH anything in a hammock.

We experience each individual part of the environment around us through several of our senses.  If we get poisonwood tree sap on our skin we can get a rash.  But, if we use another sense, say that of vision, we can enjoy the beauty of the poisonwood.  Its shiny green leaves and reddish bark make it a handsome tree and pleasant to look at.

Many of us would love to see a colorful snake or a big spider.  Some are willing just to look and would not be very comfortable touching them. 

There is even the possibility of enjoying mosquitoes..  Using our sense of touch to interact with them is not a friendly relationship.  However, if there are mosquitoes present in sufficient numbers, and we employ our sense of hearing, their humming sounds like a chorus singing.

For people like me the most rewarding sense, under-utilized by most people, is the use of smell in a hammock. Smelling is a kind of touching.  The odor molecules we inhale into our nose are actual microscopic parts of the object being smelled.  A hammock is very fragrant, especially after or better yet, while it is raining.  The rain should not be heavy , but rather steady and misty.  Moisture and low barometric pressure releases all fragrances and scents concealed regularly by dryness.  Then, if your mind is attuned and you really love the hammock and all living things in it, then, you can feel the heaving of the earth and the smell of its breath.  It is a smell of aromatic barks and the leaves of hammock trees such as stoppers, lancewood, wild cinnamon and a shrub called camphor weed.  At night, during the wet season, you can smell  heavy lumps of fragrance emanating from the open trumpet-like flowers of the apple cactus.  Throughout the year trees and shrubs like mastic, wild tamarind, and saffron plum contribute their flower fragrances to the hammock's aroma.  And the odors of decaying leaves and the bodies of animals are an inseparable part of it too.

So do not be afraid to explore a hammock.  Look, listen and smell but do not touch indiscriminately, and be very "touchy" about what wants to touch you.