Not owning a lot makes packing that backpack easy, but sometimes it means I have to get creative when I want something specific, like a tool, class or book.
So when I went backpacking over Labor Day weekend, I knew I'd be challenged with boredom once evening fell. On a normal camping trip, I would have packed a book that my hustled daily life doesn't let me dig into, but packing that in would be heavy. I turned to a tradition my hiking buddy and I started years ago, downloading an e-book to listen to on the way home from a trek when we're too tired to talk but don't want to sit in silence.
One of my parents lives in Los Angeles County, which has a massive library network, but she only checks out old school books that she can hold. And I remembered that her membership includes an app, which I was able to download on my phone, with her permission. The app let me search for and place holds on e-books, audiobooks, videos and physical books, and check them out.
I packed my bag Sunday morning, and from my phone, I printed my permit from Recreation.gov, the permitting site for federal lands and chose a book. By the time I lost signal, somewhere near the tiny town of Strawberry, I had a fully downloaded, Kindle-version of Jurassic Park.
This wasn't my first experience with modernized libraries and their technology, though. I have encouraged my cousin to take advantage of the passport office at the local Sacramento County branch to renew her documents. I've also researched local history through the website and am debating checking out a pressure washer from the Library of Things. Sacramento County also checks out instruments and tech, like a GoPro. The site also has ancestry resources for genealogy lovers.
My friends in the Bay Area have told me they use Oakland's Library of Things for tool checkouts, and San Francisco's library site has online high school and job training courses. The e-learning and computer training resources are mobile, too. Students can access tutoring and homework help, and my aunt can reserve museum and gallery tickets online through the library.
In the future, I hope to use my Sacramento app to read magazines, brush up on graphic novels that are becoming movies, and access online courses — coding skills, here we come. I also love that I can look back on what I've read, since the urge to reread beloved stories did not leave me when I downsized my shelves at home. I'm also known for having the maximum number of holds and not being able to read all the books at once, so seeing what I wanted but never got to read helps with my bucket list.
By Sunday night, I watched a pink-tinged sunset from a ridge looking down on Tahoe Basin and waited for my camp stove to boil dinner. I was able to rest after the trek over granite trail and read Jurassic Park, appropriate for being surrounded by forest and not much else. I learned two things on the trail this weekend:
Murphy's hiking law is true; you will get stopped by a ranger within a mile of camp for a permit check.
And a library app can take pounds off your back, even without other modern comforts.
