Suspended Sleeping Place

I watched a documentary on some wild communities in Bolivia who sleep in the open at night in the wild. They suspend a thick mat with a rope tied to two trees and then sleep in a suspended state at night. I found it interesting as this form of a shelter is quite safe and cannot be accessed easily- many animals cannot scale ropes. Simpl cages can also be constructed and suspended this way, its fun but they have to be suspended with a rose hung horizontally.

 

Hammocks are GREAT!!! I have several of them including one that has a bug net as part of it. They can be made out of ripstop nylon and weigh almost nothing! The secret about sleeping in them is that you don't sleep in direct line with the direction that it is hanging unless you prefer to sleep on your back only. That is a great way for a nap like in a recliner but to get a good nights sleep you need more options. If you will instead sleep at a sort of diagonal you can sleep on your side or even stomach. VERY comfortable!

You can make your own very easily too. I bought about 10ft/3m of 60in/1.5m cloth at the fabric store. You tie an overhand knot in each end then tie a rope to it inside the knot on each end. Instant hammock! There are all sorts of things that you can do to customize it like sewing a long tube out of netting that is the length of your hammock then ties a string above the line of your hammock. put the hammock and this little line through the tube and tie it closed on one end then when you go to bed pull it over you and close it on the head end with either a draw string or a clothes pin. If it is rainy you toss a nylon tarpolian over this same line and tie it off to the ground.

An entire hammock that will provide you with a bug proof rain proof comfortable niughts sleep can be stuffed into a gallon zip lock bag! Hammock camping has a lot of advanages. With the roof over the hammock the space under your "bed". is a water proof storage area. I made a little hammock that is only 3ft/1m wide and 6ft/2m long that I can hang to store stuff off the ground that is tiny with paracord lines and strong enough to also use as a seat.

The have now come out with multi person tents that you can hang in a tree that you access via a rope ladder. Talk about secure sleeping. You can hang these as high as you want and even be out of the reach for bears.

 

Agreed, a combination of hammock, basha and all season bivvi bag take up very little space. Great in woodland with uneven ground. They're fast to set up and leave very little trace when you break camp.

 

A bear can't come out on the lighter limbs and get to me in my hammock if it is up a tree without waking me up. At that point I will ventilate his head with .357" holes and probably activate the biological weapons that will make being in or near the tree with me a bad choice for any other bears in the area! ;->

 

Lonewolf, if you do like I was saying and sleep at a diagonal you can sleep totally flat and it feels GREAT. I actually got interested in them because of issues that I have with osteoarthritis. I've had both hip joints replaced from that and sleeping on the hard ground just isn't as fun as it used to be. A hammock is smaller and lighter than an air mattress and actually more comfortable. Sleeping on my back is just not something I can do well but for naps I will lay in the hammock the way most people think of and it is about as comfortable as my recliner. Unfortunately, just like my recliner it makes my shoulders hurt.

Osteoarthritis is a beast but in some ways it has made me more adaptable. I have always been sort of ambidextrous, actually bi-dexterous(some things I do left handed and some things I do right handed), but now I am more forced to use both hands for a lot of things and am moving more to them being better balanced in their use.

I don't let the osteoarthritis limit me and hammocks were just one of the things that I have found in my search to adapt. Survival doesn't mean just living after the end of the world as we know it. Sometimes it is a daily task of learning and adapting to changing conditions. LOL, getting older will test your abilities to adapt in ways that you never imagined when you were young. I'm not as strong or fast or have the stamina as I was when I was young but I am smarter, more patient and probobly a lot more likely to survive in the short term that I was because I don't take the stupid chances that I took when I was young and dumb and am more likely to avoid a fight than jump into one.