Island

In another case of an Anne Arundel County community's joining forces to combat what it sees as a threat to its neighborhood, Pasadena-area residents have organized opposition to the possibility of the state's dumping dredge spoil off their shores. The group, Citizens Against the Pasadena Dredge Island, is fighting the state's consideration of a site in the Patapsco River off the peninsula for a 1.5-mile-long island of dredge spoil. With about a dozen people on its steering committee, the group is circulating petitions and urging residents to discourage the Maryland Port Administration from studying the site, north of Bodkin Point in the mouth of the river.

A hearing on a house proposed for Dobbins Island in the Magothy River was delayed yesterday until Feb. 17 after an Anne Arundel County official concluded that the island's new owner didn't present an accurate site plan for the residence. Representatives of the owner, David L. Clickner Sr., 53, said they had reduced the size of a proposed house near the eastern tip of the island to 4,600 square feet from 5,100 square feet after agreeing to recommendations sent to them last Friday by the state Critical Areas Commission.

The state is considering dumping millions of cubic yards of dredge spoil in the Patapsco River off Pasadena, creating a 1,600-acre island - a proposal that has residents and elected officials worried that the spoil will threaten their health and safety. The site, north of Bodkin Point in the mouth of the river, is one of eight sites that the Maryland Port Administration is studying as a candidate for holding fine silt, sand and sediments dredged from the Chesapeake Bay. The Pasadena site would hold up to 40 million to 80 million cubic yards of dredged material.

The chopper came in low, strafing the island with time-release bombs that ignited a connect-the-dots pattern of brush fires. A wind, steady and strong from the northwest, helped sweep the flames into hungry orange waves.Somebody said something about loving the smell of napalm in the morning.The enemy -- in this case thousands and thousands of wetlands plants infesting Hart-Miller Island -- never stood a chance.This bombing mission over Hart-Miller island yesterday -- reminiscent of a scene from the film "Apocalypse Now" -- was carried out from the Maryland Natural Resources Police Department's helicopter and was part of the state's long-range plan for the island.

TANGIER ISLAND, Va. -- It's three weeks to graduation and the Tangier Combined School Class of 1999 -- eight girls and one boy -- has little time for sentimentality. What with fittings for caps and gowns, senior portraits, the senior trip to New York and the prom, their final days are a blur.After 13 years together, they know full well the choices they're making now will set most of them on course for lives far from the safety of this close-knit, deeply religious community of 600-plus inhabitants who think of themselves as one big extended family.

ST. HELENA - For centuries this strategic toehold of volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean had a front-row seat in the theater of world power. Long ago, when vast swathes of the world were unexplored, St. Helena Island was one of the most hotly contested pieces of real estate in the battle for control of the planet. The island - west from southern Africa - was an important way station almost halfway between Africa and South America. It was a vital cog in the slave trade and a fortified castle in the sea that helped the British empire rise to dominance.

USHUAIA, Argentina -- When Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan first caught sight of this frigid island at the tip of South America in 1519, he named it Tierra del Fuego -- Land of Fire -- for the smoky blazes rising from Indian camps on the shore. Little did he know that the Indians had their eye on him as well. Tierra del Fuego's tribes had long used fire as a signal, throwing green beechwood branches onto their campfires as a warning if an intruder was spotted. As Magellan cruised past the island in his tall-masted ship, through the straits that today carry his name, one smoky blaze after another blossomed along the shore.

We found Paradise.Better than Paradise, actually, because Bali and Tahiti, which have been said to be Paradise, are overrun with tourists. Ujung Kulon, Indonesia's marvelous national park and a U.N. World Heritage site, is not. As nearly as I could tell, there were about nine of us enjoying fine white beaches, tropical breezes, peace and quiet, good food and good rest.The park is at the western tip (Ujung Kulon is the western peninsula) of Java, the principal island in the Indonesian archipelago.

OGNENNY ISLAND, Russia - The prisoners arrive here after riding for hours past abandoned villages in a gray truck with barred windows, finally crossing a rattling log bridge. Most will leave only when they die. Inmates whose bodies are unclaimed are interred in a small village graveyard not far from the island, under markers bearing serial numbers instead of names. This is Pyatak Prison, on an island in a lake in the midst of the thickly forested Vologda region, about halfway between Moscow and the Arctic Circle.

GRENVILLE, Grenada - For half a millennium, the aromatic little seed of the Myristica fragrans tree is said to have cured everything from boils and backaches to strokes and the plague. Arabs and Indians swear it's an aphrodisiac. Malcolm X smoked it in jail when he ran out of marijuana. Wars were fought over it - including one that rendered the obscure New World island of Manhattan to the British. Today it's in toothpaste, perfume, sausages and soap - not to mention countless cups of eggnog.