Life Is But A Dream

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Berger's life is frenetic and cold. He loves the cold: "We became human, literally. We got all our human abilities, our language, our art, our science, from living an ice-age type existence." And he wouldn't have it any other way. "It's great to get people out in the middle of the wilderness," he says, his enthusiasm palpable and contagious. "We live on such a great continent, and people don't realize what's out there." His favorite spots include the Yukon, Alaska, Newfoundland and Ontario, all spectacular, freezing and grand: "To be one of the 5% of the human population fortunate enough to live on this continent is just a blessing in itself."

Before selling his Berkeley, Calif., veterinary practice of 39 years and moving to Vermont, Berger did his best to compartmentalize, working 70 hours a week and then taking a month or two off to pursue his other interests. It was always exciting and always hectic but also an arrangement that he backed into, a reaction to life's inevitable twists and turns. "When I went to vet school, it didn't quite occur to me that being a veterinarian was an indoor job." In fact, Berger assumed he'd be a zoo veterinarian, but he found that world, in his estimation, "to have the worst aspects of the military hierarchy--just too regimented for my type of life." In the late 1960s and early '70s, he managed to see a lot of exotic animals, when, at least in Berkeley, "every rock star who was making god-knows-how-much money thought the coolest thing to do was go out and buy his kid a Siberian tiger." But the laws changed, and Berger realized he had to bring himself to the wilderness instead of the wilderness coming to him.

For a man of such wide-ranging passions, figuring out his fantasy life, let alone achieving it, has been a work in progress. For a while Berger thought the perfect life would include spending lots of time in British Columbia, taking groups of kids hiking and canoeing, a practice he got into after setting up zoos and teaching nature at summer camps in the Catskills. "Then it occurred to me, after putting a whole load of canoes on the Yukon River and tying them up and giving a reading of Jack London's To Build a Fire, which is a wonderful short story, while we were drifting past Dawson, which is the start of the great gold rush, and looking up and seeing two kids with headphones listening to Metallica ... I decided that adults are much more interested in learning things like that."

What's next for Berger? Dog-sled-racing season and then, next summer, the Phelon River, one of the most remote waterways on earth. "One of my good friends said, 'Berger, this is not a rehearsal.' If you've got to retire and have nothing, it's a bit like dying. But if you have visions and ideas of what you're going to do--and those can be as simple as reading and walking--retirement can be the most energizing part of life."

Swimming for His Life

George Brunstad, 70

English Channel Swimmer

Ridgefield, Conn.