Books You Don't Need In a Place You Can't Find

The PCT 145 Little Free Library stands on one leg about a dozen yards from the trail, its off-angle glass door opening west to an expansive view of the rural Anza Valley, the better, perhaps, for the titles to take in the sunsets. This tiny trove is the creation of Trail Angel Mary, whose property abuts the PCT. Mary has long provided jugs of water, some shade, a picnic table, and other small comforts in a plastic bin to the mostly northbound hikers who pass through, typically in their second week on the trail, but the library is barely a year old and, so far as anyone knows, is the only one of its kind along the 2,650-mile route.

“I occasionally left topical reading materials in my hiker box during thru-hiker season,” she wrote, “only to discover them missing the next time I checked the box. What was going on? I decided to leave a couple books that had been swapped for the magazines and see what