 Every single thing that I own fits into this tiny house. Today, I'm gonna give you a tour. Come on in. I once had a dream of being a millionaire with a big house, a shiny car, and fancy clothes. But now, this simple life connected to the earth is the dream that I am living. My life revolves largely around food. Growing food, foraging for food, and that means storing food. In fact, about half of my possessions are jars. Right now, I am eating a completely non-industrial diet. So that means locally grown food, foraged foods. What it means is no conveyor belts, no semi-trucks. We're talking about food straight from the earth in whole form. So that means canning, like this applesauce. Dehydrating, like my herbal teas. Fermenting, like these pickles. Watch this. I just had to do that. I wasted a little bit of brine. And that means just general baskets full of food. You might remember when I owned just 111 possessions in 2016 or when I got my life down to 44 possessions in 2020, all of which fit into my backpack. It has been a decades-long journey of simplifying and downsizing my life. Today, I have quite a few more possessions than 44 or 111. And in fact, I just counted them up for the first time and it's about 550 possessions. Right now, I'm living the balance between minimalism, everything being able to fit into a backpack, and being able to have what I need in order to live independent of destructive, exploitative systems. So today, I'm going to show you this balance that I'm living through a tour of this tiny space and through showing you all of my possessions. About 90% of what I own right now is for food. So to put that into perspective, here is the backpack that all my entire life fit into when I own just 44 possessions. And here is my pressure canner, which is one of the things that I use to be able to store food and to live the simple life independent of the global industrial food system. One possession, the pressure canner, about the size of everything that I used to own. Wow, do I miss the life of this level of simplicity, but I also truly love this other form of simplicity. I am much more connected to the earth, I would say, and my need for freedom is met in certain ways and lost in certain ways. My food items include a dehydrator, pressure canner, crock pot, bowls, baskets, and trays for processing, dehydrating, and storing food. Lots of cloth storage bags, a hickory nut, mortar, and pestle for making hickory nut milk, five gallon buckets for food storage from mice and insects and raccoons so they can't get my food. So how many jars do I have? I just counted them today and it's about 300 jars. About 250 or 270 are pint jars and quart jars, and then about 30 or 50 are much larger jars. These are gallon jars. This is apple cider vinegar that I made at home and then for storing things like this is stinging nettle, actually wood nettle that I'll make tea from. Having all of these items helps me to efficiently and effectively harvest, process, and store the bounty that the earth freely and abundantly provides. So when I had just 44 possessions, the thing was I was dependent upon the grocery store. And although I didn't own a refrigerator, most of my food was being stored at the grocery store in the refrigerator. Here I actually live off the grid. Through the processes of dehydrating and canning and fermenting, I'm able to live without a refrigerator or a freezer, which are really huge items. In fact, I live off the grid here. There's no electricity running into this little house of mine. And what I do have for light is this headlamp, which I either put on to my head or I hang right here. And by doing this, it keeps me in tune with the natural rhythms of the earth. By day, I have the natural lighting of the earth and by night, I reduce the amount of light that I'm exposed to to help me get a really good night's rest. This house is wide open. As you can see, there's no screens and there's no windows. And that really works here because in this little region of the Appalachian Mountains, just outside of the Asheville, North Carolina region, there's not too many biting insects, mosquitoes and horseflies and such. So it works. And also on that note, this is not a permanent living situation. I'm just living here for the summer. And with the climate here, this situation works well for about six months of the year, about April through October. One of the balances that I have is my relationship with technology. My dream is to exist completely independent of electronic technology, but I'm always working with that balance. For me, what I choose to use are things that really add value to my life, that allow me to largely step outside of exploitative and oppressive systems. And nothing that's just frivolous, things that help me to meet my basic needs. So for example, I have this battery and I charge this up in the communal space. And then that allows me to charge my laptop. I actually got this so that I can go and do long writing retreats in the woods alone. So a lot of this is what helps me to be of service and it's also what helps me to spread messages. This is my computer and with this, I reach millions of people all over the world. At the same time, I am using social media, which are some, you know, oppressive and exploitative companies that are out there. So again, there's that balance. This is a 10-year-old computer. It's a 2013. And I had another one just like this for seven years that broke. So I just replaced it after seven years of using a secondhand computer and I bought this one for $100 secondhand. I own this iPod Touch and I don't own a cell phone. I haven't owned a cell phone for about seven or so years. But I use this for taking photos and a little bit for social media. So everything you see here, these are all of the technology items that I own besides those couple of kitchen items. So I have the laptop and the charger, the iPod Touch and the charger. Between the computer and the iPod, we're talking $150. The other things that I have are for my bike. I have my bike lights, rear and front and a charger. I have my headlamp. I have my electric razor, which for five years I've used a handheld razor. But I'm using this because, wow, my life is just more convenient with it. So right now I have that as well. And then, yes, of course, the battery here. As I said, there's the dehydrator and the blender that I showed you. Now, one thing that's not here is Wi-Fi. There is no Wi-Fi here. It's about a five minute walk over to the internet. And that really helps me for at least 12 hours of the day. You can't reach me. I'm disconnected so I can be connected. And honestly, this feels like a lot for me. It's more than I would like. But I'm reminded as I walk into my friend's houses and I see all the lights lit up and I see all the outlets full of plugs. And remember just how little this is. So again, it's a balance. And I'm not judging anyone with that. I'm just checking in and seeing where I'm at and checking in with where most of society is at. And I feel pretty good about the minimal amount of technology that I managed to have in my day-to-day life. Although everything I own for technology is right here with me, I do have things stored in the cloud, which means they're stored on a server or someone else's computer somewhere else. But last year in 2022, I made some huge breakthroughs. I deleted almost all of my photos from the last couple of decades. I think about 20 or 30,000 of them. And I deleted about 90% of my documents. So that was about as big of a breakthrough in simplifying and downsizing as I achieved in 2011 to 2013 with my physical stuff. So still making a lot of progress in simplifying and breaking free from stuff. Although I do own this computer, I do not own a cell phone. I got rid of my cell phone in 2016 and I just use Google Voice, which means I'm only accessible when I'm on Wi-Fi or with the people that are in front of me. And when I got rid of that cell phone in about 2016, that was actually the last bill to my name. You'll notice that most of this stuff is plastic. There's a lot of plastic here. And I try to minimize the plastic in my life. And one area where I have just perfected that is my clothes. So I'm gonna take you, well, we don't have to go far, to see my clothes that have no plastic. I simplified my clothing down about 10 years ago and now there's just one me. There's no business clothes to put on a costume to prove that I'm someone else to society. There's just one me. These are all of my clothes, plus what I'm wearing. And right now I've counted it to be, I believe, 12 items. I have five t-shirts. I have a wool sweater. Right now I have three pairs of shorts, including the ones that I'm wearing. And then I have a pair of pants. I have this shawl that I wear, which actually was a tablecloth. And then I have my hat. So I believe that is 12 clothing items. And it is summer right now, so I'm going to be getting some more clothing items in the fall. And I've made a huge step this year. After 10 years of transitioning my life, I now have 100% natural fiber clothing. So no synthetics, no polyester. I shed myself of my last one this year. And right now I'm actually transitioning to 100% homemade natural fiber, including the thread and naturally dyed clothing so that I can naturally dye when I'm in the earth, when I'm on the earth, so that if I dye in these clothes, I just simply return to the earth with no littering whatsoever. So these are shorts that are dyed with walnut and this shirt is dyed with mint. And they're lighter than I want. As you know, I like my green shirts, so I have more work to do. And I'm working with an apprentice who is helping me to break free from all industrial clothing. So natural dye, natural fiber, and even the buttons are made out of wood so I can truly return to earth in these clothes. Currently, I don't own shoes. It's been about five or so months since I've owned shoes. Now with winter coming, I'm going to need to make a pair. Now, why don't I have shoes? Well, it's because I simply believe in the human body. I believe that this body works and I believe that millions of years of evolution has designed something that works more than a company like Adidas or Nike that's what, a hundred years old and that at the same time as making shoes is profiting billions of dollars and spending millions and millions of dollars on advertising all to say I simply believe in the human body. Now going back to naturally dyeing, these are what I call my death peas or death beans. This is the rosary pea. I harvested them in Florida and they are one of the most poisonous or toxic plants on earth. One of these little peas ground up into a powder and ingested and I would return to the earth. I have these just in case there's a time when I want to return naturally to the earth, I would just have to get to the forest where people aren't gonna find me and let my body return to the earth. Now I'm not gonna go into too much detail about the death beans right now, but if you would like to know a lot more about my thoughts on death, post a comment and if a lot of you are wanting it, I'll do a video. In the meantime, I have a video that's called on health insurance, age and death and that's one that I would definitely recommend watching. Decorations are a big area for a lot of people to really build up a whole lot of possessions. So what I do is my decorations are mostly the things that serve a purpose for me and I try for most of all of my decorations to be things that I harvest from the earth and I can just simply return to the earth. Of course my food like my pumpkins and my jars of sauerkraut and pickles serve as a beautiful decoration with character in my home and other things, these are reishi mushrooms that I harvested this spring and I'll eventually either make tea from them or simply return them to the earth. I have my bundle of field garlic that I harvested here that sits perched up here, sharing a story about my life and then here I have turkey feathers. These came from a turkey that was hit by a car. I harvested these from the side of the road and then owl feathers also from an owl that was hit by a car and these not only serve as my natural decoration but these also serve as my gifts. Behind them I have a story to share a personal connection to them and there's no money that's needed in order to share a gift and love. So my decorations and my gifts come straight from the earth and I am not an owner of them. I'm just a temporary steward holding onto them in a place and time until eventually they return to the earth. So I'm gonna show you my books but as I'm sitting here I'm noticing, oh man, an old shoot up apple. So definitely living in this open house. The squirrels get at my food and I often come home and they're in here chewing up my foods and looks like they've been here and done this a couple times. Here's another apple clover. So yes, I am living more closely connected with the earth here. So my books, I wanted to show you these. I probably own about 50 or so books personally but I actually started a community library a couple of years ago when I started a, through my nonprofit I had a team of people living and working together and I started a community library. So my nonprofit owns about 300 or so books which right now are stored underneath the bed. Books are one of my most important possessions. In these books I have the knowledge that I need in order to live alternatively from these broken destructive systems. So these books include a lot on sustainable living, foraging, growing food, food cooking and preservation, simple and sustainable living, mindfulness, enlightenment, philosophy of life, alternative human history, tools to create an equitable and just society, black liberation and indigenous sovereignty and knowledge. If the internet were to go down, I have the knowledge that I need to live closely connected to the earth and to be ready for it. So these books are very important to me. Now this is the bed that I'm sleeping on or sitting on is where I sleep and I got this bed off the side of the road. It was being thrown away and I'm very pleased with it. It's very comfortable. The comforter I got from the thrift store and the pillow and the blanket I'm actually borrowing from my friend Natalie and we'll give back to her when I keep on moving from here. So a bed is very important for me for a good night's rest and this is one of those things that the bed, it's like, yeah, I have it right now but when I leave from here, I'll pass it on to someone else. So ownership with some things, it's like, you know, I don't have a clear line of ownership or not. One area where I do still have a lot of plastic is my camping gear. So here I have a backpack, sleeping pad, tent and sleeping bag. And I'm working on getting away from the plastic in this area but this is one area where I'm still using it. I go out, I almost don't even consider it camping. For me, it's just being out in my other home, a part of the earth and so I'm out there a lot and so a good night's sleep is very important and what's in here provides that for me. A good night's sleep out in the forest or out on my canoe trips. Those are the places where I rejuvenate and refresh to come back and be of service. One thing that's really important for me in keeping my possessions to a minimum is having just more or less one of everything, not a whole bunch for different scenarios. And so most of my camping gear is the same things that I use at home. There's just maybe a dozen or maybe two dozen items, probably less than that that are solely what I use when I'm out there in the woods. I practice a very simple and natural personal hygiene. So no deodorant, no face wash or body wash, no shampoo or conditioner, no cologne, nothing that I put on my body as toxic to me or toxic to the earth. So when I bathe and whatever I put on me comes off, it can return to the earth without polluting it. The basic things I have are my toothbrush and my toothpaste. I have a little bit of sunscreen here, especially for my nose. And then I have a little bit of body oil for treating myself. I have basic coconut oil and some moisturizer. There are essential oils. I generally always have lavender, tea tree and peppermint. And then I have some biodegradable soap for my hands and a few other items like dental floss, which is biodegradable, a pair of little scissors, a little, this is actually a nut pick, but I use this to clean my teeth so I have less dentist visits and of course, nail clippers. Also, the only thing that really is a single use disposable that creates trash are earplugs. I use these for those loud nights. So that's more or less what I have for my personal hygiene. The idea is I don't have to go to the store much. The idea is I just let my body do the work. I, you know, you might be wondering about armpit smell with no deodorant. Check in with the thousands of people that I've hugged over the last 10 years and ask them what they think. Most of them will tell you that I sometimes smelled like lavender fresh and other times maybe I had a little bit of a smell. But my belief is that it's fine to smell a little bit and that we are animals and it's natural to smell a bit. Being off the grid here, how do I shower? Well, I don't have water right here. It's a five minute walk to the nearby spring and that is where I simply fill up a gallon jug and then dump it over my head and enjoy that cold 55 degree water on my body. And it's my time to just connect with the earth. It's one of my most beautiful times of the day. Or I go swimming. It's about a five minute bike ride to the nearby river and that is where I immerse with the earth and spend connected time with the earth. In fact, my shower time is one of my most connected times and I try to stay out of those caves inside of people's houses as much as possible. You might remember I actually did a year without showering. Actually, it was a thousand days without showering and still I hop into showers as little as possible. I fill up my water jugs at the nearby spring and I drink straight from the earth. No chemicals, no fluoride, no chlorine, just beautiful water straight from the earth. I do have this water filter here but I actually don't need it being here on site but when I've lived in the city this has been excellent for removing chemicals and pollutants. I also harvest rainwater and this is the simplest system I've ever used. There's no gutter and there's no downspout. It's simply the drip edge and it comes down into some buckets and pots. So if you have a roof, you can harvest rainwater. It's as simple as that. And I also do drink this water. It's clean straight from the sky but once it's been sitting in these buckets and on the roof where there's squirrel poop and bird poop and such, I put it right through the filter and I love drinking rainwater just as much as the spring water. This is my simple outdoor kitchen. When I moved into this house there was just this bench here and so with my friend Chad we just added on this section so I have a little bit more space. I cook with this little rocket stove which is fueled from wood that I harvest right here in the woods nearby. It gets the job done. If I was in this spot longer I would build up a bigger stove. As far as washing my dishes I use rainwater and I just have this simple wash basin which that water is actually used. Well, I'll show you in a minute where that goes. As far as my pots and pans you'll see they're all either cast iron or stainless steel, no aluminum and no Teflon or non-stick. I have basic, you know, basic accessories and again, there's no plastic. It's wood or it's stainless steel or it's glass. So I keep all the toxic stuff out of my kitchen whenever possible. And same with my dishes. My dishes are either, I mean, mostly jars and they're either glass, wooden or metal. And then of course the towels. So I have my rags and my towels all are made from natural fabric so that when I'm done with them if they get old and raggedy I can just compost them. This is my compost toilet. I had this built by a friend for $15 worth of materials all secondhand. It's basically just a wooden box and inside is a five gallon bucket. So no sewage system, no pipes here, no sending off my waste to be someone else's problem. Instead I compost it. What I do is I just poop as I normally would and then afterwards I take some sawdust and I sprinkle that on there and then there's no smells and very few flies. I compost my poop just like I compost my food scraps and the plants in the yard. The difference is that I compost it for an entire year and that kills all the pathogens. Anything that could make us sick is killed by composting for an entire year. Of course my toilet would not be complete without this. This is one of my important possessions and it helps raise up the legs which gives you a more natural flow. And this system would not be complete without growing my own toilet paper. So come on over here. This is Plecranthus Barbatus, the blue spur flower and here is Mullin. This is the toilet paper plant of the North and then this is a more tropical toilet paper plant. And what I love about this plant, it is as soft as can be and it's in the mint family so it even has a nice minty smell. This is a plant that I absolutely love so much. And that water from the kitchen that I use to water the plants. So the dish water is part of a closed loop system that helps me to grow my own toilet paper and that keeps me from having to go to the grocery store. Lastly, as far as peeing goes, I don't generally pee in the toilet. Instead, I just pee right on the trees. Not on the trees, at the base of the trees. By now you might have noticed there is no garbage can or recycling bin in this house. The reason why? I work really hard to create as little trash and recycling as I can. This bag right here is my bag of recycling and trash and generally in a week or so I might fill this up. So I still create some trash but my key is composting everything that I can. Your standard things like your food scraps and your plants, cardboard and paper. When I cut my hair, it returns to the earth. When I cut my nails, it returns to the earth. No part of my body is going to the landfill. Now that's a huge difference compared to the average US American who creates four and a half pounds of trash per day which you may have seen from my month of living like the average person and wearing every piece of trash that I created and ended up being 87 pounds of trash the first time and about 70 pounds the second time. And I was a walking billboard for consumerism showing us how much trash just one of us creates. You'll notice that there's no toys in the house. There's no kids here and there's no family. This is something that I have personally chosen very intentionally at the age of 25 about 11 years ago, I got a vasectomy. And the reason why is that I had decided that I was going to dedicate my life to being of service in a way that was extreme, in a way that was most easily facilitated without having children or a marriage. And so, yes, the way that I'm living my life is designed around not having children and that idea is impermanence. I've designed my life so that I can die or I can go to jail. I can do things in a way where there are not things that can be leveraged over me such as money or family. This year I have been doing a lot of work and I'm one of the things I've done to become more whole and more connected is I'm taking a year off of romance and a year off of sex, some would call that celibacy and it has been a very meaningful, connective year. As I've not had that connection, I've found a much deeper connection with my community, the earth all around me. Another big development in 2022 after a year of simplifying was getting rid of my last identification. In 2016, I cut up my driver's license and burned my social security card. At the same time, I cut up my last credit card and burned my checks when I closed my bank account. No credit card or bank account for the last seven years. I also have no credit score. In 2022, I lost my passport and I decided not to renew it. I was in Los Angeles and upon returning to Asheville, North Carolina, where I was living at the time, I composted my birth certificate, which was the last piece of identification that I had. It has been one year since then without an official form of identification. I have no health insurance, no life savings, no retirement fund. I don't take a government check or social security and although some websites, some net worth websites will report that I am a celebrity millionaire, well, it couldn't be further from the truth. I don't monetize my social media and my current net worth is, well, I have about $1,200 in cash, but I took out a personal loan of about $4,000. So I'm about negative $3,000 and as far as the value of all of my stuff, I calculated it to be about maybe $4,000. So right now my net worth is less than zero, about negative $1,000. I have just cash, which I store in this little pouch that a friend made for me, but I don't need a big pouch because I have committed to life to earning less than the federal poverty threshold and to donating 100% of my media earnings from TV, books, et cetera, directly to grassroots activists, organizations and initiatives that don't receive the funds equitably from, for example, our federal taxes. I've vowed for life since 2015 to not paying federal taxes and instead equitably distributing the funds that I receive to places that can really serve the people and at the same time using this as a means to keep my money and my involvement out of oppressive and exploitative systems like the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, police brutality and then the lobbying of Big Pharma, Big Ag and all of these organizations buying our politicians. I keep my money out of that system so that I can put my money into places that truly serve the people. Although I don't personally have a bank account, I am a part of a nonprofit called Regeneration Equity and Justice and through the nonprofit, I work to provide resources for regenerating our earth and creating more equity and justice. Couple of things we've done, we have planted thousands of community fruit trees all across the United States or Turtle Island and we've provided free seed packs to over 40,000 people to help them break free from Big Ag and grow their own food. So although I am personally living this life of simplicity, the idea is to do this in a way that can be a resource using my privilege, my skills and my abilities to be of service to earth and humanity. So with all that I have given up, here I am. I still exist. Every time I get rid of these things that society thinks we can't exist without, I look around, I feel my chest, I call my friends and I see that here I am. I still exist. I am a part of community. And over the last decade, that's probably the most important thing that I've learned and that is that community is the solution to so much of our problems. And so for me, all of this is about being a part of community. I live here alone right now in this little shack. I spend a lot of time in solitude, but it's all about community. And I want to be clear and transparent that so many of my needs are met by community. This isn't about self-sufficiency. I'm really dependent upon others and others are dependent upon me. How I ended up here as a part of this community was actually by meeting a dear friend, Natalie Bogwalker who's the creator of this space where I am right now, a place called Wild Abundance in Weaverville, Barnardsville area, just north of Asheville, North Carolina. For my tiny house that I had in San Diego and in Orlando, I did a work exchange in order to use that space with the landowner. Today, there is no exchange. It's just human beings helping human beings, human beings connecting and helping to meet each other's needs. A note that I'd really like to share and that I would feel incomplete without saying it is that I don't really believe much in land ownership. I think it is mostly an illusion. So although this land is indeed owned by Wild Abundance, this land and all land here on Turtle Island was stolen through genocide and colonization from the hundreds of indigenous cultures that lived here before us and kept in ownership by the white people through the enslavement of Africans that were stolen from their land. So any idea of rightfully owning this land or even land ownership to me is a state of delusion to a large existence. So I have chosen not to own land because I believe the earth cannot be owned. One thing that I went without when I owned just 44 or 111 possessions was a bicycle. And the bicycle is one of the most important and powerful tools that I can ever own. This is my primary source of transportation. I don't own a car. I've been 10 years without a car and about seven years or so without a driver's license. And so this is a beautiful, important tool for me. This is a touring bicycle. It's a 1982, so it's about 40 years old and I got it for $700. And a touring bicycle is one that's designed to go long distances and carry gear. So it has a bike rack on it and it has these bike bags or paniers. So I can do my errands, I can go long distances. In fact, I've ridden across the country three times. Those were all on a bamboo bicycle. This is a steel frame bicycle and the reason I like this is it's very simple, very easy to work on. I can do repairs myself or bring it into any local bike shop or bike co-op to get some repairs done. Another really key thing on here is a rear view mirror, which especially for the roads that I'm riding on around here. And I wanna be transparent. I think this goes without saying, but I still get into cars. Although I don't drive, I'm in them. My activism takes me far outside of these hollows, far outside of this community. My community is very much a global humanity and across this nation. And so when I'm out, I get into buses and trains and cars and as much as I'd love to only ride my bike everywhere I go, I'm still burning fossil fuels. I feel like it is the tool that I, that still makes sense to use to create the change that I wish to see in the world. I'm able to live with much fewer items than most people because I've embraced that the earth provides me with all of my basic needs. I practice a deep level of gratitude and of celebration of life for the absolute most basic things around me. And this creates wholeness and completeness that these mega corporations who want to sell me their stuff cannot penetrate through. It creates a foundation of balance, of presence, of completeness and wholeness by focusing again on just the basics. The birds chirping, the plant and animal relatives around healthy food, clean water, fresh air, the things that we can focus on to bring ourselves into a state of simplicity. At the same time, it's also important to note that what I'm doing is not accessible to everyone. And that's not my intention. I am living an extreme life because our society is so extreme. Here in what we call the United States, we have just 5% of the world's population, but we consume 25% of the world's resources. That by definition is extreme. What we call normal isn't normal. The American dream, I view it as the world's nightmare. But yes, again, what I'm doing is not fully accessible to all. There's so many lessons within what I'm doing that are accessible and available to each of us to take away, but I do want to very much acknowledge the privilege that I have as a white person, as a man, as a person who grew up in this country that we call the United States. And the list goes on of the number of privileges that I have that allow me to live in this society, in this dominator society that was ultimately designed for me. And I think to not acknowledge that would leave out a really big part of the picture. So, with acknowledging my privilege and understanding my privilege as I've been working to do over the last handful of years, it comes down to knowing that I have this privilege. How do I use it? Do I live in a way that exploits and takes from others? Or do I live in a way where I use my privilege to create resources for others around me and to spread out the resources and the privilege that I have so that others who generally have less are able to access more and to live lives that are more where their basic needs are met, where they can connect with the earth, where they can be a deeper part of humanity and community. And so that's what this is really about, helping others to deeply reconnect with earth by myself doing it. I stand pretty deeply outside of a lot of societal structures. There's a lot of laws that exist by government that I don't follow, but what I choose to follow is earth code. I live in a way where if it's beneficial for the earth and it's beneficial for my community and it's beneficial for myself, but it doesn't harm others, that's what I call earth code and that's where I choose to live. I hope that spending this time with me here in this little tiny house, this little shack, has been an eye-opening experience for you and that you've learned a lot. I hope that you'll take some of these things away with you and bring them into your life. I've created so many resources on my website and here on this YouTube channel for you to dive a lot deeper. And if you'd like to, if you're not already subscribed, please feel free to subscribe and join me here where I will be for decades ahead sharing knowledge, inspiration and hope to be the change that you wish to see in the world and for us to grow together as a community reconnecting with earth.