One of the things many people love about living around here is that they truly feel at home and know their place here. They have what we call “A Sense of Place” about Kingston or Kitsap.

This may not be so true when people live in a bigger city, but here we know our own land around our house, or even our own yard or the trees on our street. We know the people who own “the corner store,” in all its various forms. We know the weather patterns, at least most of the time, and we know when the frogs started singing last year.

This all contributes to our “Sense of Place” that roots us to our community and to Earth.

We have been contending with some mice around Stillwaters lately — friendly ones who want to dine in our kitchen nightly, especially now that our mousing cat is no longer around to stand guard. I am sure many around here know this fun task every spring. As our friend Steve Criss from Critter Ridders put it, they just come with the territory and joy of living in the woods and wetlands. And with Steve’s help, we gently try to keep them in the woods and out of our kitchen.

One night, a little guy got caught in a trap but wasn’t killed or even injured too badly — just stuck in the trap. I scooped him up in a container and took him and the trap out to the woods. I found a rotting cedar stump with several holes in it and thought this looked like a good mouse home. Sure enough, when I released the trap, he ran off into a hole in the stump, seemingly in pretty good shape. I sure hope he likes the woods as much as we do.

On days like this, I know why we are here and why this place is home. Whether our little mouse friend makes it, or whether he becomes coyote lunch, it’s great to live this close to nature and the food web in all its forms.

This is the feeling I try to remember whenever there is a terrible flood that wipes out homes on a river, or a hurricane that destroys a city built on the very edge of the ocean, or heavy rains that cause mudslides to take homes down a hillside. I so often say to myself — playing the “blame the victim” game nicely — “Why on Earth do those people live there anyway?”

It does seem odd to me that people would rebuild in the same place, but as I heard one person in this situation say, “This is my home and where would I go? I sure can’t sell it. And this is my home. This is what I know.”

The Sandy River in Oregon has this problem, with floods wiping out homes repeatedly as the river changes course in winter storms. There are big new houses in the area, now just feet from the river after a recent flood. No one will buy them. Their owners are frustrated that they didn’t know the Sandy could move hundreds of feet overnight, and angry that there’s little they can do now. Of course, it would be good if we all remembered that, when considering a real estate purchase in a floodplain or any naturally critical area, we need to take a lot more time to really investigate where and what can happen to the land.

Things may get more direct around the Sandy. Based on the state’s new erosion maps, Clackamas County could decide to put further limits on building in the floodplain. “We know it would be unpopular,” says Jay Wilson, a county hazard and mitigation coordinator. “But ultimately it’s the taxpayers who end up paying for this. It may take several of these floods to get people to move back, to give the river room.”

It doesn’t take a geologist or other expert for us to learn to respect the power of nature and to learn to take our appropriate place in nature. Sometimes we need to back ourselves away and “give the river room.”

Learning to respect our Earth home and its needs is part of learning to know our place. Having “A Sense of Place” includes “knowing our place” — and that may not be as “No. 1” on the food chain.

Stillwaters is hosting a new Sustainability Discussion Group in the Fall. If you are interested in getting on the list, call us at (360) 297-1226.

— This column includes information from Stillwaters Environmental Center and The Oregonian.