The perfect hangout for summertime.

My father used to get a new hammock every couple of years and set it up under the lone sycamore tree in the backyard, but I never saw him use it. Maybe that was because his hammock was the cutesy kind, sort of a surrey with the fringe on top, only without the wheels. The dark-blue canvas was taut and unforgiving, and the chains that held the hammock to its metal frame made it relatively easy to flip a person onto the ground before he knew what had hit him. After a few seasons, Dad gave up the hammock idea and started buying aluminum chaise lounges made with striped nylon webbing instead.

As I've discovered in recent years, Dad's hammocks bore little resemblance to the real things: the multicolored string hammocks sold by vendors on Mexican beaches or the heavy, hand-knotted rope slings like the one we've got strung up between an oak tree and a bishop pine out back. The difference between Dad's hammocks and ours is like the difference between real iced tea and instant. It's the difference between a long nap and tossing and turning. It's night and day.

My daughter brought our accessory hammock home from Costa Rica the summer between her junior and senior years in high school. She'd spent eight weeks working there as a volunteer for the Amigos de Las Americas organization, teaching dental hygiene to children in rural areas. After saying "up and down, not back and forth" in Spanish all summer long, it was not surprising that her judgment would lapse a little.

She traded some expensive camping equipment for the hammock, but by the time I'd noticed, I couldn't complain. By then I'd learned all there was to know about the pleasures of hammocking, and I wasn't about to give them up.

Our hammock has 18 thick white cords drawn through a wooden dowel at each end, then knotted and woven into a crosshatched rope cradle. I've read it takes only a half hour for skilled crafts-people to make such hammocks, but my limited success weaving macrame plant holders back in the '70s makes me respect the maker just the same.

I'm not the only one who appreciates hammocks. In fact, there seems to be an epidemic of them this summer. A bird-watcher friend has positioned hers within viewing distance of a busy hummingbird feeder, and my brother has become a two-hammock man - one out back and the other in the side yard. The motel at the bottom of our hill has a big green hammock decorated with striped cushions stretched between two trees.

Every weekend when the place is full, I see tourists cocoon themselves in the hammock and before long, they're dozing off with the latest best-seller folded open, unread, in their laps. Who can blame them? The best thing about hammocks is they give you permission to snatch little pieces of your life and wrap them up in hammock dreams. In fact, they practically force you to take a nap.