A book drive, of sorts

On September 10, 2015September 24, 2015 By trailangelmaryIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

My first nobo thru hiker season saw about 20 books swap out of my Little Free Library. Many of the initial books I used to stock the library were random paperbacks purchased a-box-for-five-dollars at my regional public library. — Not books hand selected for this “special” audience. So, I had the bright idea of inviting my friends and colleagues to contribute to my little free library, and sent out the following call:

Dear friends and colleagues,

As many of you know, I own property abutting the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) in Southern California and offer thru hikers, local hikers, and equestrians emergency water, shade and — as of spring 2015 — a Little Free Library with a variety of books to take for free.

My property is 145 miles from the Mexican border and most thru hikers pass by during their second week on the trail. I enjoy interacting with hikers and talking with them about their experiences so far and their reasons for starting this adventure. I love the diversity of their responses — responses that point to one thing all the thru hikers have in common: transition. A PCT thru hike is marking a transition or serving as a means to force a transition from one period of their life to another.

I am seeking paperback donations to my Little Free Library on the theme ‘transition.’ If there is a book that meant a lot to you during a period of transition or transformation in your life and you are interested in participating in a brief conversation with a PCT thru hiker about it, read on. The book can be in poor condition, but it must be lightweight. (Thru hikers obsess about the weight in their packs.). Include a note with a few sentences describing the significance of the book to you. Provide me with your mailing address and I will place your note and a stamped postcard addressed to you in the book, along with instructions to the hiker who picks up that book to drop the postcard in a mailbox once they are done. (Note: there is no assumption that the book will be returned to you, so do not donate a book you are not willing to give away.)

If you wish to donate a book, reply to me and we’ll figure out a way for you to get the book to me.

Most thru hikers on the PCT hike south to north, passing by my property in late spring. A smaller group hikes in the other direction and will be passing by my property in the fall and early winter. I’m accepting donations now through spring 2016. I already have a large assortment of random paperbacks and do not need additional general books to stock the library.

Feel free to pass this “invitation” on to others you believe might be interested.

Happy trails,
Mary

Time will tell how many contributions I receive. In the meantime, I went to my local used book store and purchased four paperbooks that have all been very meaningful to me in helping me develop into the person I am now. Here’s the titles I’ve added to my little free library:

Thoreau’s Walden
Emerson’s Essays (first and second series)
Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
Octavio Paz’s Labyrinth of Solitude

I also bought a bunch of used nature guides to develop a reference section of books that are not supposed to be removed. Perhaps I was a librarian in some previous life.

On water caches

On June 3, 2015February 1, 2017 By trailangelmaryIn water cache notebookLeave a comment

I was surprised to see the spring issue of The Communicator, the quarterly magazine of the Pacific Crest Trail Association, with a long article (including a picture of the main Anza water cache two miles south of me) about how bad water caches were for the trail and for hikers and how the PCTA is hoping to get rid of all of them. (This article is repeated on the PCTA blog here.) Since I’ve had a cache and equestrian rest area on my property abutting the PCT for a couple years, I thought … Hmmm, should I get rid of mine? Even if I don’t get rid of it, should I remove the small ground sign next to the trail, bringing its existence to the attention of hikers. (Technically, it is visible from the trail, but it is about 50 feet off the trail, down a small hill, and, unless you know its there — or are looking for it — you will walk right by.)

One of the main claims of the PCTA was that water caches were ruining the wilderness experience offered to hikers by the trail. As a philosopher who has thought pretty deeply about the concept ‘wilderness’ and the role it has played in shaping the American consciousness, I said to myself: “Well, whether caches are ruining the hikers’ wilderness experience(s) is an empirical question, settleable by empirical means. Why don’t I ask some hikers what impact they see water caches as having on their experience of wilderness and their perceived safety.”

I went to my local RiteAid and bought a spiral notebook and Tupperware container to shield it from the rain, slapped a ‘note’ on the front inviting hikers to respond to these questions, and left it near my water cache just as the nobo thru hiker season got underway. (Admittedly, I am getting a biased sample of hikers. — Those who find water caches to be offensive are unlikely to stop by, and hence are unlikely to see the notebook. But, I thought the sample would at least give me an indication of feelings about water caches among a subset of thru hikers in 2015.) I was overwhelmed by the number of responses. It appears that there is a significant number of hikers who feel pretty strongly that the PCTA was wrong and water caches should stay.

I include below the note I taped to the front of the notebook, as well as the scanned pages of the notebook, which I removed in late May.

Dear PCT thru hiker,

If you are taking your afternoon siesta here and have a couple hours to kill, I’d be interested in reading your thoughts about water caches along the trail. The PCTA recently published an article on their website and in PCT Communicator in which they argued that all water caches should be removed from the trail. They made some good points, so I thought I’d ask you what you prefer. In your mind, do water caches detract from the wilderness experience of the trail? Does their existence tend to make you more or less safe, particularly in areas with little naturally-occurring water like southern California? Does their existence make a PCT thru hike less of a challenge than it could or should be?

I’m not fishing for praise for this particular water cache. It is a year-round cache, primarily for endurance riders who use this section of the PCT for training. (Hence, the horse-related stuff.) The sugary food, sodas and trash can are only put out during the NoBo thru hiker season. At other times of the year, it is just water. The cache and picnic table are on private property and not subject to control either by CA State Parks or by the PCTA. However, if the consensus among hikers is that water caches should go, I would happily remove the ground sign along the trail that led you here.

Thanks for your feedback and have a safe journey!
(Trail Angel) Mary

Pages from the notebook. (Names — both trail and real — have been removed.) All pages are clickable and should enlarge enough for all writing to be legible. The first three pages are the article from The Communicator as reference, so the hikers could respond to the PCTA’s reasoning.

Notebook cover	Pages 1 and 2
Pages 3 and 4	Pages 5 and 6
Pages 7 and 8	Pages 9 and 10
Pages 11 and 12	Pages 13 and 14
Pages 15 and 16	Pages 17 and 18
Pages 19 and 20	Pages 21 and 22
Pages 23 and 24	Pages 25 and 26
Pages 27 and 28	Pages 29 and 30
Pages 31 and 32	Pages 33 and 34
Pages 35 and 36	Pages 37 and 38
Pages 39 and 40	Pages 41 and 42
Pages 43 and 44	Pages 45 and 46
Pages 47 and 48	Pages 49 and 50
Pages 51 and 52	Pages 53 and 54

The Easter Bunny brings trail magic!

On April 23, 2015September 24, 2015 By trailangelmaryIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Early April 2015 saw pretty light traffic on the trail near my place, so I decided I could afford to do something really lavish: set up some special treats for Easter weekend. I had a stuffed animal chick that I set up along the trail and left a note inviting hikers to some treats left by The Easter Bunny. I bought several quarts of fresh strawberries and raspberries, several pounds of grapes and bananas and some baby carrots and left them along with the “usual” thru hiker season treats (ice water, sodas and oranges) in a cooler under the picnic table. A came back a couple hours later and met several hikers hovering over the cooler. — Success!!

While I was at it, I bought a bag of those hollow plastic eggs and filled them with little hard candies — sour balls, fire balls, root beer balls, butterscotch disks — and hung them from the redshank next to the picnic tables, inviting hikers to “find” an egg.

Responses in my notebook shows that these special treats were appreciated.

PCT 145 Little Free Library is born

On April 17, 2015March 15, 2016 By trailangelmaryIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Quite by accident, I got into the library business. I occasionally left topical reading materials in my hiker box during thru hiker season — an issue of Backpacker or Communicator — only to discover that missing the next time I checked the box and replaced with a different magazine or book. What was going on?

I decided to leave a couple books that had been swapped for the magazines and see what happened. Next week, those books were gone and there were other ones in their place. Apparently, there is a need for a hiker book swap, and who better than me, a former college professor, to set that up. So, I decided to make it official and encourage hikers to swap (or take) a book from my collection. A friend mentioned to me that there was an organization — littlefreelibrary.org — that was all about encouraging people to set up small libraries for people passing by to stop and, as the motto states, “Take a book – Return a book.”
So, I bought some construction supplies at my local Home Depot and created my very own little free library. I christened it “PCT 145 Little Free Library” with the tagline “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find” and got it registered with the LFL organization. It can be found on their “Map a Library” page if you search for it. (It is easiest to locate quickly if you search for Steward’s Name = PCT.) I initially stocked it with paperbacks I bought at a book sale held by my local library. In the meantime, I’ve come up with an alternate way to stock it with books that might be more relevant to PCT hikers.

It was set up in time for the height of the 2015 nobo thru hiker season and has been a big hit, both in terms of the number of times it has been photographed by hikers and posted on their blogs and the number of books that have been exchanged. This is definitely something I’ll continue in the future.

Future shade

On November 2, 2014September 24, 2015 By trailangelmaryIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I re-stock my cache with fresh water every week. After a couple years of disposing of unused water by pouring it on the ground, I got the bright idea to plant a native cottonwood tree (a fast grower, I was assured by the woman who worked at the garden center) near the picnic tables to provide future shade, and dump the unused water on that. I was in the process of digging the hole to receive the tree when two sobo thru hikers, Dirt Stew and Dormouse, wandered by and we chatted for a few minutes. They documented my efforts with a photo on their hiker blog, https://just2hikers.wordpress.com/2014/10/29/idyllwild-to-julian/, and ambled off to leave me to the task.

This was a five-year-old tree, seriously root bound, with dozens of roots coming out the bottom of the planter and forming a tangled mess. Several hours later, and well after dark, I finally freed the roots of the plastic, tried to spread them out in the hole I had dug, and … voila! … celebrated as the tree started its new life.

PCT 145 Trail Angel Mary

Author: trailangelmary