As writer and runner Sara Aranda pushes her body across 134 unforgiving miles from Timbisha (Death Valley) to Tumanguya (Mt. Whitney), she confronts carrying the BRCA1 genetic mutation, turning her record attempt into a poetic offering to/of body and earth.
The Route
The Lowest to Highest (CA) route begins at the Badwater Basin trailhead within Death Valley National Park, where the lowest point in North America (-282’) is located, and ends at the summit of the tallest point in the contiguous United States, Mt. Whitney (14,505’), spanning approximately 132 miles.
In 2018, it became a sanctioned Fastest Known Time route, but what differentiates the L2H from other known routes, such as the official Badwater 135 ultramarathon, is that the L2H uses off-trail, singletrack, and dirt roads as much as possible, increasing the technical difficulty and overall elevation gain to over 30,000’.
filmed on
Timbisha, Kawaiisu, Newe Sogobia, Nüümü,
Nuwuvi, Nüümü Witü, and Tübatulabal land
el viento está acá
y he llegado
como extraña
pero estoy aquà en mi cuerpo
como la tierra
y como la tierra
me inclino cuando sopla el viento
dispérsame
he llegado en viento
el viento está acá
the wind is here
and i have arrived
as a stranger
but i am here in my body
like the earth
and like the earth
i bend when the wind blows
scatter me
i have arrived in the wind
the wind is here
Sara Aranda
FEATURING AND WRITTEN BY
I invite you to pronounce my name in Spanish — it makes me feel good and seen. I have a B.A. in Creative Writing, with an emphasis in Poetry, and yet, I have been wanting to experience the medium of film for quite some time. There is a certain kind of storytelling that I feel is either missing or rare in outdoor film. Thus, I wanted something different. Thanks to 41 West Productions, I was finally given the opportunity to create what I’ve wanted to see and also tell some of my story.
OFRENDA is a glimpse into one of my favorite prompts: What is your creation story? It weaves how I interact with language, land, body, family, grief, community, myth, ceremony, and more. Being an athlete for me isn’t so different than being a woman of craft, and so I wanted to tell my BRCA story through their unique intersections. This ofrenda was made so that we may together approach a difficult kind of poetry, one that metaphysically answers a similar question of origin and prompt: What do we do with our lineages of grief?
Beyond the film, I organized a fundraiser to benefit both ReNew Earth Running and the Lone Pine Paiute Shoshone Reservation Environmental Department, raising a total of $2,422, which was split evenly between the two. Leslie Bellas, the LPPSR Water Program Coordinator, was able to use the funds for a winter community garden project: Tei-Nüümü Toowano Tunaguna (Our People's Winter Garden).
Tobin Sanson
DIRECTED AND EDITED BY
Two years ago, Sara reached out about her Lowest to Highest FKT attempt. She was looking for someone to help tell her story.
The run itself was extraordinary, but it was her why that stayed with me. She told us this would be her last big effort in the body she had always known. She told us of her mother’s battle with cancer, and that she had inherited the BRCA I mutation.
My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004. I was in middle school—confused, terrified, and completely out of control. Yet more than anything, I remember the calm in her eyes. Beneath the fear was a quiet resolve. A fortitude that felt foreign, yet somehow familiar. It brought me peace—strange, steady peace.
Looking back, I realize that peace came from my understanding that she had this. Whatever the outcome, she would fight. That was who she was: impossibly strong. Cancer only made it clearer.
Through uncertainty came survival and a sharper understanding that life is a fleeting gift.
Watching Sara move with grace and fierce calm through the California desert—through her own uncertainty—I recognized that same strength: fear transformed into resolve.
Witnessing my mother’s fight, and now Sara’s, has been one of the great privileges of my life. I hope this film captures even a fraction of the strength and beauty of their spirits.
Preston Richardson
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Preston Richardson is executive producer and founder of 41 West Productions, a stills-and-motion studio known for its cinematic storytelling and thoughtful approach to brand filmmaking. Guided by an obsession with craft and human connection, human stories.
The heart behind Preston’s work traces back to his mother, Karen, who passed away from cancer fifteen years ago. Her legacy of strength, empathy, and faith continues to inform the way he listens, leads, and tells stories that matter.
Preston first met Sara eight years ago and was immediately drawn to her writing, grit, and familiar strength. When he learned about her goal to set the first women’s FKT on the Lowest to Highest trail and her vision for sharing her craft of poems, he was all in. The intersection of Sara’s craft, athleticism, resilience, and the human experience of grief is a powerful story that deeply resonates. Her offering, her ofrenda, is a story that offers inspiration and healing to all who watch.
I begin
oval eyes,
mouth soft things.
I am a round root
of noise, touch—
Mother’s eyes
are ovals too—
Never forget
Mother’s whispers come,
you are that you are—
ovals are born
soft water in the cradle
of continent…
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Tyler Weinberger
PRODUCER
Arielle Sheres
B Camera (legend)
James Barkman
ORIGINAL SCORE BY
David Chapdelaine
a bird teeters at the top of a pine, or is it the pine teetering on the bird’s feet?
there are many ways to approach the body, be in or of the body.
i am one such fulcrum, weighed by the realization that the earth is moving,
will move one day, without me.
i teeter. i try.
The Prayer Run
About a month before Sara’s L2H FKT attempt, she attended an art installation at the Paiute Shoshone Cultural Center and met the artists behind the installation, Teyana Viscarra and Norm Sands.
Their art and altar building was exclusively about the Missing Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) epidemic, also known as MMIWG2S (Women, Girls, and Two Spirit) or MMIP (Persons). They expressed to Sara that they host a prayer run every year, but due to recent injury and other circumstances, neither of them, and none of their other usual prayer runners, would be able to complete the prayer run for 2024, which ends at Tumanguya (Mt. Whitney).
Sara told Teyana and Norm about her upcoming L2H plans, which of course involved summiting the very mountain they needed someone to go up, and offered to finish the prayer. It felt like some sort of fate to arrive there that day. A couple days later, Sara met with them again to receive sage, tobacco, and a red prayer bundle for the mountain itself. Sara wore a red bandana on her running vest to signify the bundle during the L2H, as the bundle itself was saved for the final Tumanguya section of the route.
For more info about Teyana and Norm’s activism and work, visit:
THANK YOU TO THE MANY FRIENDS AND FAMILY
WHO MADE THIS FILM POSSIBLE
