Hammock Hotel

Louise Kaestner
Dec 29, 2024
2 min read

Hammock Hotel.

Source: The Gnawnster YouTube (2024)

Interview with the Hammock Hotel

Sometimes in life things don't go as planned. We find a new place, we stray from the route, the trees tell us they love us and we are held hostage by something unexpected. In this case, it is the Hammock Hotel. On my way from the Spiritual Garden to my next destination, I came across another little jewel that isn't on the campus map. The Hammock Hotel refused to let me stride past it. Instead, it hollered at me to notice its ridiculousness and its potential.

I stared in wonder at the Hammock Hotel, thinking two opposite things at once. The first thing was that it was a marvellous idea. The second thing was what idiot thought that students would toss in a weighty hammock, and paraphernalia, into their backpacks along with textbooks, notebooks, pens, water bottle, laptop and chargers. A moment later and the wind brushed the branches around me into a minor frenzy and directed me to look at the box.

Hammock Hotel and In-The-Box Thinking

I noticed the empty poles were within a 2 dimensional box. This represented the thinking that established the hotel in the first place. Outside of the box is plenty of land protected by the shade of regal trees. The trees and the hotel whispered to me of its wishes to have an eclectic vegetable garden for the students to nurture. It was then that a branch wavered before the building entrance. The building was number 204 the School of Mines.

A tree to my right captured my attention with its delightful trunk. It told me that people taking from the Earth were most in need of learning to put back into the Earth. Here was plenty of land for the students and staff of the mining industry to tend and nurture. Therein would they develop a different kind of mindset, one necessary for the stewardship of the Earth rather than exploitation of resources. It's okay to take, but one must put back, for if one does not put back, what will be left to take? I stared at this tree and wondered at its wisdom.

Heaving a sigh, I switched my camera off to conserve battery for the next destination. As I walked past that wise tree, I reached a hand out to caress its bark. Beneath the tree's skin, I felt its life. Though it is a different kind of life to mine, it is life never-the-less and deserves the same respect that I do, that we all do.