In a red hammock stretched from a pine to a magnolia tree, Douglas Tam sat alone.
But then some of his friends from Campus Crusade for Christ, or CRU, drifted over to his spot on Plaza of the Americas and settled into their own hammocks.
Brightly colored Eagle Nest Outfitters (ENO) and Grand Trunk hammocks regularly pepper the lawn in front of Library West, but Wednesday was different.
It was National Hammock Day, and the UF Hammock Club called students to celebrate.
“If people just hang around, they’ll never really know each other super well,” said Tam, wearing an orange “UF Hammock Hang 2015” shirt.
The goal, he said, is for people to get outside and enjoy the day, and about 15 people came out to the plaza to do so.
“I really like the community aspects of a lot of things,” said Tam, a 21-year-old in UF’s pharmacy school.
Some of the first hammockers to flock to Douglas were friends Molly Riall, a math sophomore; Maria Cirillo, a psychology sophomore; and Julie Christmas, a theatre and business freshman.
“Doug’s the champ,” Riall said as he worked on stacking two hammocks above his red one and welcomed other hammockers.
Riall started to say that she expected the event to be hot and sticky. Cirillo interrupted her and said, “fun.”
“Fun,” Riall reaffirmed.
Tam said he is excited to see the social media response. The Hammock Club has been promoting the event on Facebook and Instagram, encouraging students to tag photos with #UFHammockDay.
Tam said the idea to start a campus hammock club began when his friends got hammocks around Christmas.
In the Spring, the group started ENO-Trunk Tuesdays, a term Tam and his friends coined to refer to their weekly gatherings on Plaza. Both ENO and Grand Trunk brand hammocks — and their owners — were welcomed.
ENO-Trunk Tuesdays started off small, Tam said. But as the semester progressed, what started off as a group of five sometimes drew in about a dozen hammockers.
“It really just kind of took off,” he said.
The UF Hammock Club will be official in the Fall, Tam said.
The group will connect fellow hammockers through events and trips. Students can expect to hang out on campus, as well as in the community, like this past Spring’s UF Hammock Hang in Westside Park.
A camping or beach trip is also a possibility, Tam said.
As the afternoon progressed, small bands of friends made their way to the trees.
A group of three settled into their hammocks.
Among them was Alexa Bledsoe, who graduated in Spring and is working over the summer.
“(I’m) just hanging out over the summer — literally,” she said from her hammock.
She and her friend Megan Becker hammocked in their church’s prayer room. Becker said she’s also hammocked in the church attic.
Bledsoe, Becker and Becker’s longtime friend Kalin Gabbert, 19, laughed and lounged.
Becker, they said, regularly falls out of her hammock.
“She fell out once today,” Bledsoe said.
But Becker laughs it off.
“It’s still fun,” she said. “It adds a little humor to it.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 7/23/15]
