-Honey, did you bring the water bottle?
-I wonder if there's any water around here.
Should we do suntan lotion?
-There you go.
Do your foot.
-Does water make you wet?
-Water makes me wet.
-Not so very long ago, two artists lived on my Earth body.
They were a couple madly in love with each other.
As ecosexuals, they also considered me, the Earth, to be their lover too.
They told everyone they knew how much they
loved me but I wasn't always convinced.
I could tell that they appreciated many parts
of me but they were most happy in my water.
Annie grew up swimming in the warm pools
and cold mountain lakes of California.
Beth grew up in West Virginia, swimming
in mountain creeks, rivers, and streams.
Within months of hooking up in 2002, Annie and Beth
collaborated with my waters to make educational films.
In 2009, they married the sea in Venice, Italy.
In 2013, they married my Lake Kallavesi in Finland.
Their home base was San Francisco.
From the University of California Santa Cruz, they ran the EARTH Lab,
a nomadic institute for environmental art, research, theory, and happenings.
The lab led walking tours.
-What's next?
Any more E spots?
-Hosted ecosex symposiums.
-This is to determine how ecosexual you may be.
-Engaged with scholars like Sandy Stone.
-Do you know it takes 10,000 gallons of water to make one computer?
I bet you didn't know that.
You know why you didn't know that?
Because it's not true.
-Helen and Newton Harrison.
-We work with water, not on it.
Not of it but with it.
-Produced performance art happenings.
-Give me that water light.
You feel me this?
-With artists Dragonfly.
-Without agua, without water, you can kiss your ass goodbye.
You understand?
-Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Balitronica,
Saul Garcia Lopez and Judy Dunaway, the balloon virtuoso.
-The couple loved during research in my redwood
forest and Butch loved all that wood too.
Their research methodology included listening to my flowing streams.
-They also talked to other ecosexuals about my
waters such as artists Reverend Billy Tallen.
-Let’s not deny that we’re made of water.
We’re 70% water.
Amen.
We are a bunch of water bags right here with eyes peering out.
Hallelujah.
Water is at the center of everyone’s idea of magic.
It’s changeable.
It changes everything it touches.
It changes you immediately.
It changes a boulder over five centuries.
Water, water, flow into me.
-We baptize in the Church of Stop Shopping-
-That's super erotic.
--with water.
It is erotic, I've noticed.
There’s a water presence in all the old
religions, the bad ones and the good ones.
There’s a water presence in all of them and
we know that this is the source of life.
-Water, water, flow into me-
-Absolutely, I'm an ecosexual.
I was an ecosexual the moment that idea was given
to me by Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle.
--from here to the sea.
-Hey, girls.
-They loved visiting distinguished Professor Donna Haraway.
-They're bugs. -Are there bugs?
We won't go there.
-I think it’s called Golden Shower, the popular name.
The water worlds, right now, seem especially
important as stuff,
but also as a symbol, as metaphor, as ways of soliciting each other
into thinking and feeling differently.
The sensuality and sexuality of water as a way of soliciting and inviting
each other into a polymorphic sensuality that is for and of the Earth.
-Are you an ecosexual?
-I think that we need each other.
I think of ecosexuality as really an important
thread in the fabric and it’s one of my threads.
Yes, absolutely.
You guys have been particularly good at plumping that thread up
making it rich and thick and colorful and shimmery and--
-It was nice to know other people were engaged by ecosexuality
but something ominous was looming on the horizon.
In 2016, California was in the grip of a 500-year drought.
Reservoirs, rivers, and underground aquifers dried up.
Residents were told to prepare for life with less water.
California had some of my most prized topological attributes,
valleys where food was grown, my hottest deserts, 840
840 miles of rugged coastline and mountain ranges with snowpacks
that supplied much of the drinking water for the state.
All this diversity made for rugged landscapes but
the state’s settlers never let that stop them.
Beginning with the discovery of gold in 1848,
Californians adopted a philosophy of putting my water to work for them.
Hydraulic jets were used to blast hillside
mines, arteries for commerce were created, and a
series of vast government water projects supplied
water for agriculture and residential use.
California was dependent on just a few storms each
year to provide most of the state’s water supply.
During the height of the drought, Beth was pessimistic.
She believed that humans were causing my systems to collapse
and make my planet body unlivable but Annie disagreed.
As a native Californian, she had lived
through extreme weather all her life.
She wondered why Beth was so doom and gloom and Beth wondered
why Annie was acting like Pollyanna over climate change.
Then, it rained, and it rained and rained.
Dams broke, reservoirs filled to capacity,
water restrictions were called off.
What the fuck was going on?
I was just as confused as Beth and Annie.
They heard about some protests in support
of my waters and decided to join in.
-Hey, hey.
Ho, ho.
The pipeline has got to go.
Hey, hey.
Ho, ho.
I am a hoe that likes a hoe.
-They stuck out like sore thumbs.
They were weirdos, perverts, flamboyant
ecosexual artists, and non-linear thinkers.
Then, back in their San Francisco research
center, something terrible happened.
-Like most city slickers, they were clueless about their wastewater.
They wondered, “Where does it all go?”
-This is a diagram of the San Francisco combined sewer system.
This basically gives us the location of the three treatment plants we have.
We’re at the Oceanside Treatment Plant, right here.
We service 20% of the residents here in San Francisco.
From here, we discharge into the Pacific Ocean.
-How much water gets flushed every day in San Francisco, do you know?
-It's about 80 million gallons.
-A day?
-A day.
Our toilets are not trash cans.
There are only three things that should be flushed down the toilet.
We call it the three P’s; poop, paper, and pee.
That’s toilet paper.
Kleenex, paper towels should not be going down the toilet.
-I heard you're not supposed to flush condoms, is that true or can you-?
-Condoms are not biodegradable.
They should go in the trash cans.
-My father moved to West Virginia from Michigan.
That was his first job when he came to
West Virginia--Was cleaning out outhouses.
Of course, my family doesn’t talk very much about that.
-Right.
Well, working around poop, you get used to it
because we could say, "That's the smell of money.
That's the smell of money.
That's the smell of money working around poop.”
-I want to thank you so much for taking
care of our water and cleaning it for us.
I mean, I'm glad we don't have to do it at home.
-We have a program called Adopt a Catch Basin
to help us maintain and keep those
catch basins clean so that storm runoff
can go right into the main sewer lines.
Now that you’ve learned about wastewater treatment, you ladies can
be ambassadors as well and get the word out and the knowledge.
-What's the word we need to get out?
-Wastewater treatment is very important
and your number two is our number one.
-In order to take the tour, gloves, hard hats.
-How do I look?
-Good.
-That looks great.
-On a perfect day, it’s on a 14-hour process from when the sewers come
in the plant to when it’s treated before it goes out, 14-hour process.
-Yes, it's a continuous process.
We run 24 hours, seven days a week.
-This is where the raw sewage is coming
into the plant from the pump station.
-So, that’s raw sewage down there?
-Raw sewage.
-Wow.
That just looks like a river.
-These are pictures of what the inside of the bar rakes
look like and you see a lot of condom right here.
-A lot of sex going on in San Francisco.
-It’s a combined sewer system.
When the rainwater hits the streets, it runs into the storm drains.
The drought harmed us because we need that
rainwater to help move the sewage to get here.
With not enough water in the sewage,
that feces just settles, then you get your gases.
Then, your sewer lines are deteriorating from those gases.
We need water to help it flow.
-Holy cow.
-These are digesters.
This works like a human gut.
-So, this is the body of the plant?
This is sewage.
It's coming in from houses, water that's coming
in from the drains and rain and what else?
-Storm runoff.
Wow, this is amazing.
-What makes wastewater treatment so important?
We're keeping the environment safe.
We're keeping the residence safe.
San Francisco residents are fortunate to have Hetch Hetchy
because they don't have to use a sewer water to drink.
It comes from snowmelt.
Some third world countries have to use their wastewater for drinking water.
I just let you ladies compare tap water and you compare it to the effluent.
and you compare it to the effluent.
This has been treated.
This was going into the Pacific Ocean.
-Oh, wow.
-This is where we discharge the effluent into the Pacific Ocean.
-That's beautiful.
-As they looked down over San Francisco’s effluent going into my ocean,
they thought about how much they had just learned from John Smith.
How could they be good lovers to my waters
when they didn’t know shit about shit?
They decided to set out on their own across
California in their EARTH Lab research unit.
Why they thought this was a good idea?
I'll never know.
These two have a mind of their own.
Who am I, the Earth, to tell two ecosexuals what to do?
Their first stop was suppose to be the Hetch Hetchy
Reservoir near the Yosemite Valley to visit the source of
San Francisco's drinking water but as can happen with
these two, they got distracted and never made it there.
Somehow, Annie and Beth ended up at a
research reserve in Sierra Nevada mountains.
While humans created maps to conquer my surface,
I've always divided my waters by watershed boundaries.
My wet spots with the original mapping technique.
-You can see how the plants are changing
as we get further away from the creek.
We're now in a dryer meadow and we're getting into forest
and how quickly things change when you move from the water.
-The water that we’re comprised of is the water that we
take in so if you live in San Francisco, you’re really made
from the Tuolumne Meadows area because the San Francisco
water is from Hetch Hetchy, which is on the Tuolumne River.
I’d much rather be made from Tuolumne than from a big city.
-We are so lucky to be here today at Sagehen
when there's a double rainbow and gnats.
-This is the fish house.
-Females are teeny.
They'll turn on their sides and they'll-
-They dig with their tails.
--dig with their tails and they'll make these nests in the gravel.
-They're called reds.
-It's like a peep show, a live sex show. -It is.
-The fish house is absolutely-
-Because the females are working on their nests
and the male, of course, are coming in to-
-They're working on the females. --they’re working on the females.
They’ll slide up next to them and shiver.
It’s really funny to watch.
-Do scientists sometimes come here to watch the fish mate?
-Yes, a lot of what I know about brook trout was learned
here at Sagehen through this fish house channel actually.
-Wow.
-It's really beautiful.
What I love about the underwater world is it's a whole other world.
It's like another planet.
-It reminds me of my dad somehow.
It's like he's watching a football game.
He's bored.
-Never a predictability to it.
There’s always something magical and new--I mean,
just compare the differences in water between
a desert river in flood that’s mostly mud and
a tropical sea or a clear mountain stream.
It's aesthetic.
The way the light filters is all about how much water is in the air.
Everything is water.
The landscape itself, the shapes of the landforms are all about water.
They were all carved by water and ice.
Everything’s water.
All the water that’s ever been here is still here.
Maybe we’re looking at drops of dinosaur blood and
Cleopatra’s bathwater and ice from the ice caps.
-Water is not always this calming peaceful thing.
It can be extremely violent.
-It's powerful.
-Power, yes.
Make you feel really small.
There’s solid, which is ice, in the form of snow
which can avalanche and in the form
of water, which if you’re a guide rowing
boats, high water can be extremely violent.
-Scary stuff happens.
We were both river guides in the Colorado River and when there was a lot of
snow and the snow would melt in the spring, you would get huge, huge water.
-The waves would be really 40-feet big.
-Falling out of your boat in the rapids in high water, you go very deep.
It can be very violent.
-I went deep and came up but never got to the surface.
I was seeing myself as this thing just going away from the light,
going into the dark and then, boom— I popped out of the water.
I probably came pretty close to not being around.
I respect it now, whereas before I just abused it.
-Water is an interesting phenomena.
You always have to respect it.
-Jeff and Farthen’s stories made Beth and Annie realize that
my water could be a cruel lover and there was no safe word.
They sought out guidance from the goddess
herself deep in the redwood forest.
-Two of my favorite people on the planet,
doing all this to help the planet.
We love you.
Welcome with blessings.
Wherever you go on your journey, remember you are
the fairy queen ready to administer magic and
sparkling transformative fairy dust, which you can
sprinkle on everyone as your gift and leave a trail.
-They don’t call her sprinkle for nothing.
-That's right.
-This is a deck of the oracle with 64 forms of the divine feminine
energy crafted for our times, combining all sorts of spiritual entities.
Liquida, there she is at the center of our mandala.
-Liquida is the water daikini.
Liquida slips in and out of form.
She embodies the liquid state in general.
70% of the planet’s surface is covered in water and
about the same percentage constitutes our bodies.
Liquida is the water in our bodies, the water we drink,
the waters which nourish and sustain life on Earth.
The living organism that is our planet
always maintains the same amount of water.
It cycles through all the planet’s life systems, evaporating,
and condensing, constantly mutating, and always maintaining.
Water is healing and soothing for you.
Sit by bodies of water and meditate with the water and its nature.
If possible, experience energy of different kinds of bodies of water.
Let the water be your guide.
-After their reading, the ecosexuals finally relaxed a little.
It was easy being in Boulder Creek,
a former logging town with a wild west feel.
As a former sex worker, Annie loved Boulder
Creek because of its rich history of brothels.
-Den of intiquity.
-The swamp house.
It was surrounded by water so if you were really
drunk, you couldn’t get into the brothel.
I love that Boulder Creek has whore pride.
-Beth liked Boulder Creek because of her
hillbilly roots and Butch loved his balls wet
but with so much more to learn,
they knew their journey was far from over.
They decided to visit another field station down by Big Sur.
-I’m going to want one of these, you know that?
-Thimbleberries.
-What are they?
-They're good.
-Thimbleberry.
-Thimble?
-Yes.
-They're super good.
-This is Big Creek.
This is one of the perennial streams in Big Sur.
It's about 24 square miles of catchment area.
There’s resident rainbow trout in here.
There’s freshwater sculpins.
It’s a very rich ecosystem and it’s also extremely clean.
There’s no development in this watershed
that effects the creek and in terms of
the composition of species, of stream
invertebrates living here, it’s complete.
When people come here for classes or for research or to
go on nature hike, people want to get in the stream.
It's very cold so they're not in for long.
The water’s very clear.
If you can look underwater, it’s almost like air.
You can hardly see the water.
When you spend a lot of time next to the
stream, you think you hear people talking.
In certain circumstances, you'll think, "Oh, I hear people having
a conversation", you’ll look around and there’s nobody there.
We separate a lot of that out with science and academia but when
you spend a lot of time out with wildlife and in nature,
you realize that you don’t really need to know the name of the
thing, you just start to recognize its place in the environment.
Stop talking all the time.
Slow down.
See where your mind goes.
Listen and watch and think and wait and ask questions.
What’s going on there?
Why is that happening?
What’s that bird doing?
Why is it making that noise?
-Rather than listen to the creek as Mark
suggested, Beth and Annie stayed on the move.
The Salinas Valley grew so much lettuce that
it was called the Salad Bowl of the World.
-What you’re looking at now is what we
call our industrial wastewater system.
This water comes from the washing of vegetables and salads
that get put into bags for consumption by consumers.
You see our bagged salad and bagged produce all
across the country and sometimes across the world.
The city of Salinas grows 90% of the nation’s
table lettuce for at least half the year.
The important thing to know about the farmers is
they are absolutely totally bottomline people.
If it means 5¢ to them, they’ll do it if they can afford to do it.
One of the great things we’re doing--and I sometimes think
this is one definition of sustainability--is to take
something which was once a liability like wastewater and
turn it into an asset like water that can be recycled.
-The idea of recycled water was music to my big
Earth ears and the ecosexuals liked that idea too.
-Welcome to the future of water.
The first process here is what we call ozonation.
What will happen is the flow goes around thousands of these little straws
here and the water gets sucked in and takes out almost everything.
We inject the hydrogen peroxide and run it through and that will
oxidize and completely disinfect anything that’s potentially left.
By the time it comes out of there, it is ultra, ultra pure water.
This is treated wastewater.
This came through the treatment plant.
This is a combination of your municipal sewage, stormwater, ag wash water.
-Does it have a bouquet?
-It has a bouquet.
-To water.
-To water treatment plants.
-As the EARTH Lab mobile unit chugged
down the Pacific Coast Highway,
Annie and Beth stumbled upon some creatures with whom
they felt a lot of love and solidarity.
-Let’s try this weight loss program, okay?
A female loses over a third of her body
weight during her time on the beach.
I think we should go to the beach, honey.
-Breathe in the tangy sea air made pungent by the-
--giant kelp.
--and millions of tiny phytoplankton.
-Say phytoplankton again.
-: Phytoplankton.
-Excuse us.
-What does elephant seal yoga look like?
-He’s doing downward dog.
-Take two.
-: What do you love about water?
-Are there some issues about water that are affecting you these days?
-Does the plastic in the water bother you?
-I like your little fins.
Can we cuddle?
-Let’s cuddle.
-Communicating with the elephant seals left them
wanting to know more about the health of my oceans.
-Exhibit A is the baculum of the elephant seal, which is
the bony part of the male organ of the elephant seal.
-Holy cow.
That’s some baculum there.
-Yes.
-I don’t want to touch it.
-If you go into bars in Alaska, they are quite common.
-Yes, different.
Walrus--Actually, it’s walrus bacula are very huge.
-Are walrus baculum bigger? -Bigger, yes.
-They have our initials on them, one’s Annie and one’s Elizabeth.
-Well, there you go.
-What’s that say about--Sorry about that.
It's nothing.
-This is not the size.
-Have you seen changes in the ocean, like the health of the ocean?
Have you seen that?
-The thing I’ve learned over the years is you really got to watch
long term stuff because there’s a lot of variation over time.
Without understanding the variation over time,
you really can’t evaluate the impacts of the now.
-So, you’re not afraid the ocean’s going to die, the whole ocean?
-No.
I mean, it will change.
There’s no doubt about that.
-What do you love about the ocean?
-I look out at it every day and it’s dynamic.
It’s always changing, whether it’s a storm coming in or the winds
coming in one direction or the other, the tides going in and out daily.
It’s just in a constant state of change.
If you look behind us, who knows, you might see
a blow of a whale as it goes by so you get
used to seeing these patterns and then,
you just see changes in those patterns over time.
-One of my favorite things about the ocean is light.
I love the light on the water.
I really imagine the light and the water dancing together.
-One of my favorite things to do on a clear day--Today, actually, is
a clear day--is to go out snorkeling and the light coming through
the kelp and the light shining on different colored kelps on the
bottom and the interplay of that and fish dashing through it.
Then, your shadow and the light coming off
of you and radiating out through the sea.
It's all pretty.
Yes, it gets pretty surreal.
As you spend more time, you focus on little things.
As sea changes over time, you see different
patterns and how those patterns exist.
It’s space.
This is as close as I’m going to get to
outer--I’m not paying to go up in outer space.
It's much livelier and much more life and
biodiversity and much more interesting than space.
-Is there any message about the ocean you would like to send to the world?
-Sorry.
-Humblest apologies for all our misbehavior.
Just stay aware of it and you respect it and be kind to it as you
possibly can and love it because, without it, we won’t exist.
-Annie and Beth left Don and continued on their road trip determined to
learn more about my oceans but somehow, they ended up at a tourist trap.
In the 1920s and 30s, newspaper baron,
William Randolph Hearst’s castle was where Hollywood
stars and the political elite frolicked
together in and around the famous Neptune Pool.
-The Neptune Pool is empty.
-: Oh, no.
It’s cracked.
-Shit.
-That’s why I was coming here, was to go swimming.
-: We were going to go in the Neptune Pool.
-Oh, no.
-Is there senior's? -25.
We should get a senior discount.
I like these balls but this has water in it.
-It’s the swimming pool of the Hearst Castle.
Honey, here’s a present for you.
-Nice.
Actually---I’m like water.
-Ready?
One, two, and three.
-How about this?
One, two, and three.
-Ready?
One-
-On one foot
-two, and three.
-I don’t think we need the bag.
-Are you sure?
-Yes, save the trees.
-Since the Neptune Pool was closed,
they headed to a pool that was always open.
-Oh, I love the warmth.
-It wouldn't untangle, honey.
Go back that way.
-We’re in Granada Hills in the suburbs of
Los Angeles in my family home pool where I grew up.
I was definitely an aquaphiliac from a very young age.
I gave my first blowjob in this pool right on those steps.
That’s why I picked the name Sprinkle when I got
into the sex industry because I loved it wet.
Whenever I would swim, I love the visuals, the colors of the water.
The light playing on the water was like fairy glitter to me.
The ripples and I love the bottom of the pool.
-This was the gathering house for all the kids when they were little
because those steps are broad and really good for little, little kids.
-I have an important question I’ve always
wanted to ask, do you pee in the pool?
-No.
-Can I tell you something really nice about growing up with
a pond, you can pee in the pond till the cows came home.
In fact, the cows often peed in the pond.
That’s great.
-Growing up here with the pool, we had a diving board at that end.
There was a steady line of kids jumping
off the diving board, backflips, dives.
-Who was the best swimmer?
-You?
-That was the one thing I was really good at, was swimming.
Reading, forget it.
No.
I was a terrible reader.
You were the reader.
-I was the reader.
Sitting in the shade, reading.
Lake Tenaya was something my father in Yosemite--My dad
discovered it in 1961 and it became an annual thing.
Dad wanted his ashes scattered there.
It was just such a meaningful place and it still is for all of us.
-Bye, Lora.
Thank you. -Come back soon. -Bye, Lora.
Thank you. -Come back soon.
Love you guys.
-Love you, too.
-After reminiscing about the family pool,
they paid a visit to Annie’s mother in Hollywood.
-Hi, mom.
-Hi, Ellen.
-How are you?
-I’m fine.
I’m so glad you came.
-We’re glad to see you.
-Hi, Lucille.
How are you?
-Fine.
Give me a kiss, Beth.
-I’m coming.
I’m coming.
How are you?
Nice to see you.
-This is such a lovely surprise.
-We brought you a croissant.
-That’s always welcome.
Lovely.
-Can I have a bite?
-Sure.
-Are you hydrating?
-Hydrating?
-Drinking lots of water?
-Yes.
-Mom, one of the things I’m really grateful to you for is that
when we moved to California, you got us a house with a pool.
-Really?
You were always a wonderful swimmer.
You used to swim all the time.
-Well, our pool in Granada Hills was my happy spot.
-Really?
-Yes, why did you get a house with a pool?
-So all of you guys would learn to be good swimmers.
-It was a safety thing.
-Well, partly.
In California, so many homes have swimming pools
and so many little kids drown so the best way
is to have a pool and have a good teacher and teach
your kids water safety and how to swim well.
-Did you like to swim, Lucille?
-No, I hated swimming.
I just get goose flesh talking about swimming. -Okay, you don’t have to talk about it.
Don’t talk about swimming.
-Did you enjoy going to Lake Tenaya, Lucille?
-Yes.
-Beth and I are on our way to go sprinkle
some ashes in Lake Tenaya-of dad’s.
-Well, good.
Dad would love that.
-Want to come with us?
-No, it’s too hard for me to go anywhere.
My traveling days are over.
-Mom, where do you think you might like your ashes sprinkled?
-I don’t know.
Surprise me.
-Do you want lipstick or no?
-Whatever you think is best.
-Does that feel good?
-Yes.
-It does feel good, doesn’t it?
-Okie doke.
-Love you.-Thank you.
-Your lipstick looks great.
I just messed it up a little.
-We’re going to go out the door. Bye. Love you.
-Okay, see you.
Is that just a movie goodbye or a real goodbye?
-Hi, mom.
-Ellen, what a lovely surprise.
-Even though the government had declared the drought
over, my aquifers were still severely depleted.
In the mountains of East Los Angeles, lack of water
was causing some of my animal species to die.
Beth and Annie headed to San Bernardino to meet
with someone who really knew what was going on.
-We’re at the very end of the natural stretch of Strawberry Creek.
This is the forest that I worked on the longest,
it’s the San Bernardino National Forest
that we’ll be seeing today, and I was here
for thirty years, so I know it really well.
My job was to try to take care of the
animals in the forest as best I could.
I grew up hunting and fishing and loving the outdoors.
From the time I was twelve on I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I wanted to be a wildlife biologist.
-We’re going to go up on Highway 18 and look at the springs in here.
Strawberry Creek starts here and runs down the mountain.
The water’s actually being taken from a series of wells and tunnels
that Nestle has put into the mountain up here to get that water.
-Nestle’s is the company that’s doing this.
-Yes, Nestle, and they’re bottling it as Arrowhead Spring water.
Their claim is that it’s spring water-that
it bubbles to the surface naturally.
Well, that’s a bunch of bull.
They’re really mining the water off the mountain.
-Is what’s going on with Nestle affecting the animals?
-A lot, yes.
We have half a dozen species that are
threatened, endangered, and imperiled.
We have Southern Rubber Boa, which is a snake about
twelve inches long and it’s on the state threatened list.
-They need water, they need groundwater.
That’s what this is all about-taking groundwater.
We have Spotted Owls.
Then we have Bell’s Vireo which is a little bird.
It’s endangered.
We have Willow Flycatcher, which are endangered here.
The Speckled Dace is the fish it was here.
It's a Santa Ana Speckle Dace.
There was only 10 populations left of them.
They used to be in hundreds of streams in Southern California.
We've lost three different populations of those in just the last 15 years.
Now, we're down to seven places where that species even lives.
Yes, it broke our hearts.
-I can't even imagine, 30 years you take care of these fish and animals and
then a company comes along and takes the
water that you worked so hard to keep.
It's just so real.
You hear about it but then when you see it and know
someone who really knows what they're talking about
that makes a big difference not just read about it in
the newspaper but someone who is here for so long.
I wore the wrong shoes, these ticks can get right
up in there and the twigs you sticking in.
Rattlesnakes are biting right through the shoes but they look cute.
-These wells that they've dug, are those
impacting other people's water sources?
-Up here, there are people on the mountain
that are really worried because they're trying
to get to that water this way, and here's Nstle
coming in below them and taking the water.
-Well they can actually drop the water level, correct?
-Sure, sure.
-Ouch.
-Annie if you want to wait I can, I'll be back here in just a little bit.
-No.
-You okay?
-Watch those bushes when you go through.
-Are we there yet?
-We're almost there.
-Geez.
-Well that's an amazing view.
Aren't you glad you come down?
-I think so.
Is that pure drinking water?
-Yes, that's water from groundwater so it's--
-We can fill our bottle?
-Sure, it's got all that distance we walk down to
clean it up before it gets here so it's gone through-
-A lot of rocks.
--hundreds and hundreds of feet of rock.
Arrowheads Spring Water is their big brand name for their spring water.
If they took it out of a well they couldn't call it spring water.
They only pay I think $562 a year or something
like that for all that water that they get.
Sixty-five million gallons of water average
and then it gets split into litter bottles and
then sold for a dollar and a half, making
millions and millions of dollars off of it.
When we come here in the summertime, the only water
around here will be just a little bit of dribble
coming out of that pipe and all the birds from
around the area are coming here to get that water.
It shows how precious every little bit of water is that we have and not
just the birds but the bees and the different kinds of insects and animals.
We have salamanders that need to have moist ground so
there is a whole bunch of animals that need water.
It's a shame we're taking it all.
-That's shocking that people could easily fix
it for the animals and they won't do it.
-Well, they'd have to give up some of their water.
Have you seen recently there's been a couple of countries that
have given river's status of people instead of corporations?
We made corporations people which is stupid.
-It's worse than stupid.
-I'm trying to fight that every chance I get
but it seems it's a losing battle.
-Well, we keep fighting.
I'm going to keep fighting until I'm six feet under.
-Me too.
-You can really fell it.
Poor water.
Do you think water feels?
-I don't know.
The whole thing works as an ecosystem.
Yes, it probably it does.
-Water carries the emotional energy of the world.
It runs down the mountain, comes back up as the fog or the
clouds, comes back down into the ground, but we're water too.
That's good water.
-Water, I am so sorry for all the things that we do to you as human beings.
We put you in these pipes and then we capture you and make
you essentially flow the way we want you to flow and I hope
one day, I hope all these pipes burst and that you get to
flow the way you want to flow because, water, we love you.
We’re so grateful to you for giving us life and for giving us pleasure.
Thank you so much.
We love you, water.
We love you very much.
-They got me.
Their advertising got me.
I just went in to pee.
-I just went into pee and the next thing I’m ordering a burger. -Thanks for calling us.
-Why did you not call me?
-You didn’t pick up.
-You did call me. -Is your phone off?
-I don’t know. -I did call you.
Well, they get you with the smell, the visuals-
It’s bad.
How many gallons of water are we?
If we gain weight, does that mean we have more water in our body?
-Well, the real question is how many gallons of
water does it take to produce a pound of beef?
I think it’s a lot.
-Yes, this is our annual burger.
-It’s horrible.
It’s all dry.
-We’re airing all our dirty--
This is more embarrassing than making porn.
Way more embarrassing.
Oh, my God.
-French fries never felt so good, honey.
Anything for art.
-After 1,000 miles, road trip food was taking a toll on their
bodies so they sought out some of my healing hot springs.
-We drove nine hours into the desert to see what we would find.
-You’re here looking for an adventure?
-Basically.
-Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
From my understanding, eco-sexuality is about
fulfilling your libido and desire to be aroused by
what’s around you, fulfilling your sexual desire
using the sensory arousal that you get from nature.
I’m not sure if I get it.
To me, it seems like more of an awareness.
For me as an outsider, I was, "Okay, this is a
whole world that I haven’t even delved into yet.
-It doesn’t have to be actually physical sex.
You can have sex in so many ways and eco-sex
is--It’s an ecology of sex and sexuality, right?
What do you love about water?
-I love water as a lubricant to my insides.
I feel more whole when I’m hydrated.
-What do you love about water.
-Just it has the power to turn make you feel
so human when you are so thirsty or so hot
or so dry, just not moment of submersion or
indulgence and you literally wet yourself.
-Definitely.
I had an experience one time where I was swimming in the ocean in Hawaii.
I think the ocean was about 75 degrees and I laid
back and I was just floating and it was just warm
enough that I couldn't tell which part of my body was
outside in the air and which part was in the ocean.
I was, "I feel like I'm in the womb right now,
I feel like I'm in utero" It was amazing.
-Water
Wade in the water, children
Wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water
-Out of nowhere, Beth’s high school friend Xandra
showed up to have her eco-sins washed away.
-Next, they went to climb the waterfall at Salvation Mountain where
visionary, Leonard Knight tried to wash his sins away with art.
-Wow, look.
Do you see that?
Is that water or dust?
Annie, let’s interview that guy about water.
-You get the Titanic reference?
-How long have you lived out here?
-Going on 12 years.
-Wow.
-Wow, isn’t it hot?
-Yes, 119?
120?
The humidity is what kicks our ass.
-Don’t you have to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated?
-Yes, I drink a lot of beer.
-There’s no plumbing, right?
-No.
None up here.
There’s no plumbing.
There’s no electricity.
There is no jack shit up here.
I have no air conditioning but I know how to stay cool.
-How?
-Well, with the water inside my trailer, I have a pump and I have a
shower in there and me and her take a shower together, keep cool
and I have a fifth wheel and with the fifth wheel I’m upstairs all the time and
the breeze from the Salton Sea comes this way and I’m cool upstairs.
Look at the weather.
Where I live you can see the Salton Sea perfect.
-Do you go swimming there or would you?
-No, I don’t.
Don’t.
It’s poison.
-We are going to anoint this little shrub here with some
pristine water from a far away source, an artisanal
well, an artisanal well that will feed this one poor
shrub in the midst of this desolate toxic landscape.
-Boy, if you didn’t know it though, it’s so beautiful, isn’t it?
-It’s crazy.
-Because there’s this great irony about this
vast beautiful California dream landscape.
You come upon it and you’re like, "Look, there’s this beautiful water and
there’s trees and then you come down here and it’s like, there’s this crust
on the sand and there’s dead fish and it’s the embodiment of America"
destroyed dream, the dream that turned turgid and desolate and toxic.
-Tell me why you started doing the neti pot?
-Yes, I had cancer.
I had sinus cancer and they removed the
whole left side of my sinus so that I don’t
have a natural mechanism that pushes stuff
out so I have to do this twice a day.
Why did I get sinus cancer in the first place?
Probably as a result of accumulative exposure to a lot of different
toxic chemicals, including some of my own choosing, but not all.
First, we’re going to put premixed packets of saline.
A quarter teaspoon of salt.
If your water at home is clean and safe you can use water from the tap.
If not, you have to boil some water and then let it cool down to
lukewarm temperature because you do not want to burn your sinus.
Fill it up to just below the rim.
Just below the rim.
Then you want to shake it up.
Make sure your hands are clean.
You’re of at a 90 degree angle.
-Okay.
-You gently put this up.
Here in your nose.
-Right.
You just keep your mouth open, keep breathing.
Keep breathing.
There you go.
-Wow.
-It’s fun actually.
-That is so weird.
-How’s it going there?
Did you get it through?
-Yes.
Like that?
-Yes, that’s good.
Then just gently, gently you can-if you lean
forward a little more it should come out straight.
-Yes, yes, yes.
-There you go.
It takes a little practice to get the feel.
-It’s windy.
I don’t usually do this outside.
-It’s fun, isn’t it.
My neti pot.
Now, we’re neti potting.
Oh, my God.
It is a little intimate.
-So much snot comes out!
-Namaste, little shrub.
Cheers.
-Cheers.
-The next stop was Lake Tenaya, where Annie spent so many happy summers.
-Here we are at Lake Tenaya with Annie’s eyelashes.
Dad wanted to be sprinkled here.
-Yay, dad.
-Who was a total ecosexual.
-Yes?
It’s a nice place to be sprinkled.
-A young man, looking at his phone while driving, rear-ended the EARTH
Lab and sent them rolling across Highway 5 into oncoming traffic.
-Ow, ow, ow.
-Take your blood.
Put staples.
-It was definitely rear-ended.
-Butch was thrown from the van and was nowhere to be found.
-I have a confession to make.
They almost died, but, honestly, in that moment, I could care less.
I was always giving and giving and they were always taking me for granted.
If I was really their lover, then why were
they treating me with such carelessness?
They’re always anthropomorphizing me.
Giving me all those human qualities when
I am so much more than merely human.
I knew Beth and Annie were trying very hard to encourage others to love me.
I appreciated ecosexuality.
It soothed my aches and pains.
If they really loved me, they would be even kinder to my sensitive body.
Especially, now when I’m feeling so vulnerable.
I’m not the type to hold a grudge but
their eco-sins too long for me to list.
I will just point to one.
Their EARTH Lab research van.
Sure, it is better to drive a well-maintained
older vehicle than to buy a new one.
Come on, look at what you are doing to my ailing atmosphere.
I was ready to put an end to my relationship with Beth and Annie.
Then, while they were in the emergency room,
I found this old file in my junk folder.
-It’s really hard to stay positive through these
movements but if you let yourself get bogged
down by anxiety over climate change, you lose
that joy of why you love the environment
so much and it’s hard to keep yourself going
if you lose that spiritual levity and that’s
something that I think eco-sex really means
to me-is fighting that despair with joy.
-I said to them, "Beth and Annie, I don’t
want to split up with you two yet.
I’ve thought long and hard about our relationship.
I like that you try to pleasure me.
It makes me feel good.
Gives me some hope.
I need that.
We all need that.
I could see that they needed a little help finding Butch.
After no sign of him for five days, was he dead or alive?
I sent my best doggie detective their way.
-There he is.
-I spotted the dog on the side of the canal along the road.
-Who’s a good boy?
Who's a good boy?
It’s so good to see you.
-He was fine.
He was healthy.
He just was scared.
-Butchie.
-Then, I created a special pollination pod
made of recycled junk to get them home safely.
Once there, please don’t take our relationship for granted.
If you do, we may not be together much longer.
I love you.
-After their recovery, they adopted a storm drain.
-Let’s go adopt our drain.
-Yes.
-Here we are on the corner of Ellis Street where our neighbor Thomas lives
and we are adopting a drain because we don’t have any children.
We only have a dog.
-We should say a few words like in the
way of a little poem about the drain.
Some speak about a brain drain, some say money down the
drain, but water is the issue running down my drain.
-You should hear the water when it’s
really raining and running down the drain.
Makes its own music.
-This is the drain called Bessie.
Okay, Bessie, it’s your day.
-Okay, Bessie.
It’s your day. -Happy first day of spring. -It’s spring.
It’s your day. -Happy first day of spring.
-Yes.
-Bye, Thomas.
-See you.
Thank you.
Agua
-Next, they crashed the San Francisco pride parade
and officially added the E, to GLBTQI E.
-Agua que viene del cielo.
Agua que viene de hermana.
Agua que vive la tierra.
Agua que vive en nosotros, que vive en nosotros.
-We are eco-sexuals.
The Earth is our lover.
-Yes, we are.
-We collaborate with nature.
We treat the Earth with respect, affection, and sensuality.
We are skinny dippers, sun worshipers, and star gazers.
We are earth’s sex workers, sexologists, academics, environmental
activists, feminists, eco-immigrants, putos e putas.
-Agua es vida.
No te quiero despedida.
Agua agua.
No te vayas a la chingada.
Agua es vida.
No te quiero despedida.
Agua agua.
No te vayas a la chingada.
Agua es vida.
No te quiero despedida
-We are just a sea foam.
-Water is life.
Earth is home.
-Water is life.
Earth is home.
-We are just a sea foam.
-H2O, H2O, we’re going to save water and drink it slow.
-Blood pee cum sweat.
Water really makes us wet.
-Blood pee cum sweat.
Water really makes us wet.
-H2O, H2O, we’re going to save water and drink it slow.
-Well, that brings us to the end of this chapter
of Beth and Annie’s eco-sexual adventure.
Now, let’s talk about you.
Does water make you wet?
I'll be waiting.