Jaredbiz.Blog

Named after the gold telluride calaverite and the Spanish word for “skulls,” Calaveras County sits in the Gold Country and High Sierra regions of Northern California. With a growing population of around 47,000 — 91% of whom are white — it’s a place where tradition runs deep. According to the 2024 presidential election results, 62% of Calaveras voters are registered Republicans, with Democratic registration steadily decreasing, now around 34%. Four major state routes (4, 12, 26, and 49) vine through the county like roots, connecting its many communities. Though Angels Camp is the only incorporated city, the county is made up of several towns and rural communities: Valley Springs, San Andreas, Murphys, Arnold, West Point, Mokelumne Hill, and more.

Calaveras is best known for its role in the California Gold Rush — Angels Camp and Murphys were both booming mining centers. Calaveras Big Trees State Park, home to ancient sequoias, draws visitors from all over. But most famously, the county celebrates the Jumping Frog Jubilee, an annual fair inspired by Mark Twain’s short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Frogs have become a symbol of local pride — so much so that my rival high school’s mascot was literally the Bullfrogs.

I’m telling you all of this to give you context — for the place I called home from 2010 to 2024. I spent 14 years of my life in Calaveras County. And while my relationship with this place — its people, its politics — is rocky at best, I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t shaped me. Calaveras gave me my best friends, countless memories, a high school diploma (lol), and a childhood full of small-town rituals and inside jokes. Through it all, this little bubble I’ve jokingly called Calabama since middle school is, and always will be, home.

It actually hasn’t been that long since I moved out. It’s only been about a year since I returned to the Bay Area after graduating from the University of San Francisco in 2023. Still, this past weekend, my partner and I took a trip back to visit family — and to press pause on San Francisco life, even just for a few days.

Coming home to Calaveras is always a strange, familiar feeling. I’ve left and come back many times, some by choice and some not. The COVID-19 pandemic meant I was video-calling into USF classes from my childhood bedroom for nearly two years. After graduation, I returned again — this time for what was supposed to be a gap year. That gap year turned into the beginning of my teaching career. For the first time in years, I wasn’t just living in Calaveras — I was working in it. I became a substitute teacher, first as a long-term first-grade teacher and later as a long-term English teacher at my alma mater.

That year changed me. It showed me my passion — teaching — but also reminded me why I once couldn’t wait to leave. I faced serious challenges, including bigotry and homophobia, especially as a gay teacher in a deeply conservative county. I was let go from a job I loved because the administration refused to protect me. And yet, the people — my family, my closest friends — are what keep Calaveras tethered to my heart.

This post isn’t about making Calaveras County sound like the worst place in the world. Because it’s not. In the frightening world we live in, it’s far from the worst. This post is about naming the complexity — about holding space for a place that is both beautiful and broken. A place where country music plays on the radio and the local drink hut, Day-O, still serves up Red Bull drinks in every flavor imaginable (Summer’s Kiss with watermelon and vanilla is my favorite). A place that frustrates me, scares me, shaped me — and will always, no matter what, be my hometown.

My love letter to Calaveras:

Dear Calaveras,

You weren’t my first love — but you were my longest.

I didn’t choose you, not really. I arrived in 2010, fresh from the Central Valley, wide-eyed and unsettled. The quiet threw me. The heat sank into my skin. I remember seeing cowboy boots in the grocery store and wondering what kind of place I had landed in.

I didn’t know then that you’d become the backdrop to almost everything.

You held me through middle school student council speeches I wrote too seriously, high school heartbreaks I swore I’d never recover from, and those long drives through sun-bleached hills that always looked like they were on the edge of something — burning or blooming, I could never tell.

You taught me how to drive — and how not to. You gave me winding backroads, parking lots behind the grocery store, and steep hills that taught me patience (and how to hit the brakes gently). I learned how to move through the world behind the wheel, Lorde’s discography blasting too loud, windows rolled down.

You gave me Friday night football games and dry summers that cracked the ground. Winters where the soil came back to life. You gave me cheap pizza, late-night bonfires, creek beds, and one best friend who knew me before I knew myself — and still shows up, even now.

You gave me a stage. A band room. A mic. You gave me my first real taste of performing — and I fell hard. From marching band uniforms that never quite fit to musical theater rehearsals that ran too late on school nights, you helped me find my voice before I even knew what I had to say. Thank you for that.

You also gave me a mirror I didn’t always want to look into. You taught me what it means to be different in a place that doesn’t know what to do with difference. You showed me how small towns can love you one moment and erase you the next. Being queer here felt like walking with a mask you didn’t ask for — one you learned to wear before you even knew why.

And still, for all your flaws, you showed me what community really means. I saw it most clearly in 2015, when the Butte Fire tore through these hills — burning over 70,000 acres and reducing homes, businesses, and entire neighborhoods to ash. But even in that devastation, people showed up. We gathered in school gyms and grocery store parking lots, passing out bottled water and homemade meals. That fire changed us — but it also revealed something I’ll never forget: when everything falls apart, this place knows how to hold each other together.

I’ve left you angry. I’ve left you hurt. I’ve packed bags swearing I’d never come back — and still, I do. Again and again.

Because somewhere between the noise and the silence, the flags and the fences, the fire season skies and the Frog Jump fairgrounds — you got under my skin. You stitched yourself into me. You raised me. And even when you didn’t fully know how to hold me, you never fully let go.

You are not perfect. You are not easy. But you are mine. And I love you — not in some shiny postcard way, but in the messy, complicated, scratched-up way that feels real. The kind of love that holds the whole story — not just the pretty parts.

You’ll always be in the background — not loud, not perfect, but constant — stitched into the way I move through the world.

Forever yours,

Jared ❤