announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation--a margare a. cargill philanthropy-- the orange county community foundation, man: there are songs about this spring right here. there are songs about the springs over here. there's a deep connection, a relationship that the indigenous people have with this environment, and everything is connected. second man: it's really helpful to think of the desert as an archipelago of tiny, little wet places that are separated. sort of the ocean inside out. third man: we are part of this land. it's a part of us. we have to learn how to understand it and how to work with it. it's here for us. it's here for everybody. so if we mismanage it, we don't take care of it, we abuse it, we're contaminating it for the next person that's coming down the road. second man: we've done a really bad job of maintaining this