jaredspaulding.com Posts

May 31, 2022 / / Livin the dream

Editor’s Note:  I wrote and published this post in 2014.  It has always been one of my favorites and so much of what I have reflected on still resonates with…

April 16, 2022 / / Desert Notes

Thick, pungent smoke billowed from between the two pieces of wood. First, wispy and upward in strung out curls, then heavy, grey, and everywhere. The lungs, laboring from the arms’…

March 19, 2022 / / Family

Devil’s Slide rises almost 800 feet above my boyhood hamlet of Stark. As a child the deciduous forest that stretched northward across the railroad tracks from our house felt immense.…

February 20, 2022 / / Climbing

Any time my friends and I end up at Del Taco in Las Vegas at midnight, there has got to be some sort of story. “Well, what do you want…

January 31, 2022 / / Family

  Editor’s Note: On the table by the window here at 616 Washakie sits a sun faded copy of Daniel Doan’s book, Our Last Backpack. It was a gift to…

December 25, 2021 / / Desert Notes

The slots rise hundreds of feet upward, the narrows windy, twisty, sandy, muddy, straight, steep, flat, red, black, orange, grey, everything in between all those. These cleaving slices through the…

November 7, 2021 / / Family

Author’s Note: The November 7th of 2021 marks the 25th anniversary of my father’s unexpected passing.  He was 46.  In the 23rd year after his death I actively engaged with…

October 26, 2021 / / Family

My tears take the long way to the pillow. They trace a line over my cheek bone and down to my chin, being slowed by week-old stubble, before depositing themselves…

September 19, 2021 / / 616

The pandemic reinforced my love of tea and tacos.  Here is the beginning and the end to 2021’s daily grind: ~ the pot: with Andy home it is a two…

August 28, 2021 / / Horses

I lost Luke twice.  He was my first love.  I remember the tears rolling down my cheek as I wrapped my arms around him.  I buried my face into his…

July 31, 2021 / / Alpine Notes

I have no tattoos.  That story is one of lazy summer days, friendship, and happenstance.  But it is not for here.  Here is where I tell you what tattoos the…

June 29, 2021 / / Horses
May 24, 2021 / / Alpine Notes

Editor’s Note: The author lives and writes from the current and ancestral lands of the Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho, Apsaalooké, and Cheyenne.  His direct ancestors landed at Plymouth Rock in…

April 27, 2021 / / NOLS

Editor’s Note: I wrote this piece, taken from an interview with a NOLS alum, close to two years ago.  The interview was done in the process of writing a NOLS…

March 29, 2021 / / Desert Notes