Badwater Basin: Finding Perspective at the Lowest Point in North America

In October 2019, I was serving as a Regional Organizing Director for Kamala Harris’s original presidential campaign in Nevada. For anyone who’s lived the life of a political field organizer, you know what that means: 100-hour weeks, one day off if you’re lucky, little pay, and endless hours working out of coffee shops because you believe—deeply—in America’s ability to be better.

That fall, I was running on fumes. The campaign trail isn’t glamorous; it’s exhausting, relentless, and all-consuming. But on one rare day off, a few colleagues and I decided to trade canvass packets and strategy calls for something entirely different: a drive west into the desert.

We ended up at Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America. At 282 feet below sea level, it’s a stark, surreal landscape—an endless salt flat where the horizon blurs and the sun feels close enough to touch. It was hot, but not unbearable. The kind of heat that bakes you slowly, wrapping around your skin and settling into your bones.

We stood there, staring at the cracked white ground, the mountains rising impossibly high around us, and we couldn’t help but feel small. For me, it was more than just a break from campaign chaos—it was perspective. In the middle of the grind of politics, where everything feels urgent and overwhelming, the basin reminded me how vast the world is, how ancient these landscapes are, and how fleeting our own worries can be under the weight of time and geology.

In that moment, I had no idea what was coming tomorrow, let alone in 2020—or in 2025, when I would decide I wanted to visit the lowest points on every continent. Back then, I was just a young woman grabbing at scraps of exploration wherever she could find them. Now, I carry the privilege of chasing those dreams fully. My former self would be astonished at how far I’ve come.

We laughed, baked in the sun, and let ourselves just be. That day reminded me of something I try to carry into both politics and mountaineering: the importance of pausing, of grounding yourself, of remembering why you started the work in the first place.

Standing at Badwater Basin wasn’t a summit, but it was a moment of clarity—a reminder that sometimes you have to go low to understand what it means to rise.