When Cindy and I and our boys Ben and Jordan arrived here in the summer of 1986, we felt embraced by Bainbridge Island.

We stopped at Ordway where teachers preparing for the start of the school year came out to the station wagon to greet our kids! We went to the Kel-Lin drive-in for fries and to Fay Bainbridge and the Town & Country and we were sold. We thought we had arrived in a real community, where people attend to their friends and neighbors and where collective well-being is never too far out of mind.

We were right, and in the 32 years since, it hasn’t changed. People who are here want to be here, and they work at what kind of place it will be. All sorts of sung and unsung heroes are out there tending to the things neighborhoods and organizations do, making sure that what for decades has been a special place doesn’t diminish itself and become just another place.

Of course, it’s not the same Bainbridge Island as in 1986 because there are just over twice as many of us here now. As much as it surprises or even disappoints me to know 10 people on a commuter boat rather than knowing 100, the population increases have brought their own energy. There is a constant freshening of who were are and what we aim to do on this Island.

As much as our splendid natural areas define us, Bainbridge Island is that and much, much more. Have we seen the BARN, or visited the Arts Project, or hung out at BIMA, or enjoyed a show at BPA, or Improv, or Island Theatre, or Ovation, or the Bainbridge Symphony with its recent stunning visiting cellist? What a vibrant community — maybe it’s the schools that compel and welcome us in, or the library, or the Library U programs, or park district classes. Or a hundred other places, organizations, and things. It’s a splendid weekend (last week!) when you go to a pop-up Vietnamese brunch, a film festival at the Lynwood, and explore the Bainbridge Island Land Trust’s Agate Passage Preserve.

Even in the face of such activity, what has compelled Cindy and me for more than 32 years is the land itself. Before I agreed to co-chair the land trust’s very bold Stand for the Land campaign with Zan Merriman and Cullen Brady, Cindy and I explored this land hundreds of times.

We had been so far out on the beach at minus tide that it seemed as though we were halfway to Seattle. More than once, we have completed the Sea to Sea adventure from Murden Cove to Fairy Dell, going up Wardwell to the East Grand Forest, through Hilltop and the West Grand Forest, and up the Forest to Sky Trail to Battle Point Park. We confess to have figured out a detour that includes a stop at Bainbridge Gardens for mid-hike coffee.

Stand for the Land is out there as a campaign in every possible way it can be for a reason. The land trust aims to acquire and protect five or more special places because such actions help Bainbridge Island continue to be Bainbridge Island (visit www.bi-landtrust to learn more and join in!).

The map of what the Bainbridge Island Land Trust, the park district, the parks foundation, the city and countless partners have conserved over the past 30 years is extraordinary, nearly 1400 acres. We must not shirk our obligation to continue to keep pace with development.

That’s what Stand for the Land will do. We are closing in on being half way toward our $5 million goal and we need each and every one of you, the whole community’s help.

Protecting our nature in the literal sense is protecting our nature as a community as well. What an obligation, and what a godsend that so many Islanders feel it so strongly. It’s a commitment to species other than our own, a noble idea given the self-obsessions of homo sapiens. The land trust strives for connectivity of major wooded and wetland areas to give critters a path and a break. Hence, the building of both the Grand Forest and the Gazzam Lake Nature Preserve through six separate transactions.

The same conservation acquisitions respond to the news of the day, helping to sequester carbon and to recharge the aquifer that serves Bainbridge and much of Kitsap County,

These spaces serve us, too, of course. Walkers, hikers, bikers and horseback riders are reveling in the world that we together are creating. If you want a solitary experience, or to get into the deep woods with a small group of friends and try to spot the woodpecker you are hearing, this is the place for you. You can peek out at the bay and see the kingfisher as well.

Here’s the irony, and you can make it a delicious irony if you will. The joys that emerge as we experience these magnificent places are often solitary experiences. But the only way that we can keep these places wild is by doing it together. And, that turns out be the lesson of maintaining community as well. Communities honor and create individual adventures, but at their most successful and sustainable, they represent a collection of shared dreams.

That’s what we can have if we continue to work together as a community to protect natural Bainbridge, and to Stand for the Land.

To help with the land trust’s Stand for the Land campaign, see www.bi-landtrust.org/stand.

David Harrison is co-chair of the Bainbridge Island Land Trust’s Stand for the Land campaign.