EcoFest is upon us! On Saturday, April 30, hundreds of Kitsap residents (and guests!) will descend on Stillwaters to celebrate Earth Day and have a lot of fun! While we provide a lot of Earth-friendly education and ideas and a time to walk in the woods, a lot of the emphasis at EcoFest is on fellowship and building community.

You may think we have food and entertainers, music, plays and dancing to get people to come. But the reason we make this festival into a fun day for all ages is that we want people to linger and get to know each other. We want to build community.

We care about the vendors, too. As the information booths are arranged on the property, we think about which exhibitors would like to get to know each other better, and we put them near each other so they can visit during the day. There is a lot of laughing and visiting that goes on between the booths.

Why is this community building so important to an organization promoting sustainability? If you look at nature, you will see all plants and creatures living in communities. They interact with their neighboring plants and creatures in a complimentary way, a way that benefits the entire community. Many of them include humans in that community, too, as they adapt to having us living in their natural spaces.

If we want to be a sustainable civilization on a sustainable planet, we need to learn to live with the entire community that surrounds us. This includes the plant and animal systems and the humans, too. We think so much of what needs to happen for sustainability is on a global scale, or what the big companies do, and what kinds of products we use or don’t use. That is all important, to be sure, but what we do in our own community is critical.

So please take the time to get out to know your neighbors and celebrate with your community.

There are many opportunities in North Kitsap for meeting others, and I hope you get to as many as you can. You will get another chance to celebrate with Stillwaters and the entire community on June 23, when we will have a froundbreaking party at Arness Park for the Stillwaters Fish Passage construction. Save the date!

STILLWATERS EVENTS

ECOFEST 2011: Stillwater’s Earth Day Ecology Festival will be held April 30 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Stillwaters Campus on Barber Cut Off Road in Kingston. This year guests can bring smaller electronics like cell phones, DVD players, laptops to recycle. The entertainment lineup includes live music, wildlife demonstrations and vendors.

NATURE CAMP: Stillwaters believes every child should experience the joy of getting dirty in the woods, muddy on the beach and wet in a stream, while exploring the world around them. With that in mind it offers three summer camps:

•Eco Camp for Middle Schoolers: For grades sixth through eighth. Runs July 11-14 from 1-6 p.m. Cost is $110 for Stillwaters members, $130 for non-members.

• Nature Camp for Elementary School Children: For grades second through fifth. Runs July 25-28, from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Cost is $110 for members, $130 for non-members.

• Polliwog Camp for Young Children: For ages 4-7. Runs Aug. 1-4, from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Cost is $60 for members, $75 for nonmembers.

Registration opens for members May 4, non members can register after May 18. Call (360) 297-1226.

RAIN GARDENS AND RAIN BARRELS: Rain gardens are an effective tool to protect your home and manage stormwater runoff. Learn to design a rain garden and use rain barrells to conserve water on May 6, from 1:30-3 p.m. at Stillwaters. Class is $15. Rain barrels are $50. Call (360) 297-1226 to register.

WATERSHED TOURS: Explore the Carpenter Creek watershed with a guide on May 7 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Call (360) 297-1226 to pre-register.