NONFICTION - Nov. 21, 1993

ISLANDS AT THE EDGE OF TIME: A Journey to America’s Barrier Islands by Gunnar Hansen (Island Press: $22.50; 222 pp.). In Galveston, Texas, the term is “BOI,” short for Born on Island: on Saint Helena Island in South Carolina, natives distinguish between the “come-heres” and the “been-heres.” For this book Gunnar Hansen traveled the East Coast’s barrier islands, from Boca Chica and Padre Island in southernmost Texas to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and what he found was long-established cultures--human and non-human--threatened by development and the ever-changing weather. One of Hansen’s aims is to illuminate the inter-connections between man and nature, to show that man prospers at the continent’s edge by respecting nature rather than attempting to master her, and on that level he succeeds: his description of the hurricane that leveled Galveston in 1900 is horrific and mesmerizing, and his conversations with native islanders--usually reticent, independent, suspicious--can be compelling. Less so are Hansen’s dry, scientific descriptions of barrier-island weather and geology, though they are sometimes leavened by Hansen’s encounters with local environmentalists. “Islands at the Edge of Time” is more serious than most travel books and sometimes feels like homework, but readers interested in the subject will find much to please them.