Welcome to Remarkable Retirement Under Shadow of Giant Redwoods

Like the silhouette Mt. Tamalpais cuts against this wooded town’s horizon, Kay Boyle is at once elegant, uncompromising and exquisitely sharp.

“I tell you, I’m really quite simple-minded,” she insists again. And you see the regal woman photographer Man Ray captured 62 years ago in black-and-white. The angular features, Roman nose, wavy crest of hair.

You see a flash of the expatriate writer in Paris, the poet, the lover and lonely heart. And you see all the years since, the unfolding of mother and teacher, anti-war activist and author of 40 books.

Kay Boyle at 90 is much as she was at 25 and 35, a dissonant mix of priggish unorthodoxy, enormous compassion, utter impatience. She is willful and alive in old age. And she’s in good company at The Redwoods.

The 10-acre retirement community within this city just north of the Golden Gate Bridge has drawn an unusual number of accomplished artists, activists and adventurers whose creative lives have continued into their 80s and beyond.

They are a collage of the 20th Century, people like Boyle, whose latest collection of poems was published last year; Leon D. Adams, whose newest edition of “Wines of America” came out in 1990; environmentalist Elizabeth Terwilliger, who continues to inspire thousands of kids each year with her nature walks; writer and photographer Wright Morris; Gwynne Hill, whose first book was published not long after her 80th birthday; children’s books author Lillian Pohlmann; dancer Aron Tomaroff; farm worker organizer Fred Ross, and John Rose, a world traveler and philosopher of life.

Gusto is in abundant supply at the nonprofit Redwoods, a friendly compound of buildings with graduated care--from independent one-bedroom apartments to round-the-clock facilities for the infirm.

“We don’t look for people who are docile,” said Vera Madison, director of admissions. “We want people who are independent and proud of being in control of their lives. The point is to be truly alive.”

The result is a spirited mix of remarkable minds unwilling to slow down for something as mundane as old age. Even if they are not quite so limber physically, time has made them no less feisty or discriminating.

Though it would make a nice image, they are not all great friends passing their golden years together in the communal library. They are more like seatmates at the start of a long airplane flight: wary of getting trapped in a tedious conversation that could last the rest of their lives.

They don’t unconditionally respect each other’s work or laugh at one another’s jokes. They’ve kept pretty much the same distinct personalities and predilections they’ve always had.

“These are people who remember the past but are engaged in today,” said Madison, who pre-screens all 330 residents. “They are survivors who know what they like and don’t like--and know what they want to do.”

Not everyone at The Redwoods is fully engaged in living. There are expressionless faces, hollow eyes, people who are marking time. The thing is, age in the end seems not to matter much in the equation.

Some people grow old in their youth. Others never quite find the time.

“Honestly, you’d think I’m a half-wit the way you talk to me,” Miss Boyle snaps at her good friend, the naturalist Elizabeth Terwilliger. “I am 90 years old. You needn’t address me like a child.”

By turns imperious and coquettish, Miss Boyle is at the moment impatient to firm up next week’s theater plans and get back to her desk. “Honestly,” she says again, huffing off with a wave of her brightly painted cane.

What Miss Boyle says is true. Mrs. Terwilliger does have a way of addressing adults in the same breathless tones she has used to captivate tens of thousands of school children over 30 years.

“Mrs. T.” is a Marin County institution, her trademark straw hat and apple cheeks as much a fixture as the daily ebb and flow of the tides. She’s already been out today tramping marshland with 40 kids.

But there’s still light left, sunshine slanting through the skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows at The Redwoods. Come out here, she implores, more hyperactive 8-year-old than widow of 82.

“Stop! Stand still!” she whispers, squinting up at a flock of birds crossing overhead. “Now put on a black coat with red shoulder pads. Now say ‘ook-lee, ook-lee’ Now you’re Mr. Red-Wing.”

It’s magical, this evangelistic patter she’s used to bewitch kids going back generations. (“Dip two fingers in black paint and draw two lines around your neck . . . “) Could anyone be so perpetually turned on?

Then her pencil-darkened eyebrows shoot up at the sight of a vulture headed out toward the San Francisco Bay. “Quick! Raise your arms in a V. Now you’re a turkey vulture!” And you realize she truly can’t help herself.

Over the years, Mrs. T. has gained countless converts, many of whom have helped her establish a nature conservancy, keep developers in check and forge miles of bike and walking paths.

“You’ve just got to use your senses all the time,” Mrs. Terwilliger says, her hazel eyes ablaze. “Mother Nature has given us all these things to look at. I don’t want to miss anything--not a thing.

“Joy is in discovery,” she says. “This is what’s fun.”

“Fun is following your fundamental hunger--and for me that’s always been a hunger for excitement, adventure,” says Leon D. Adams, an former San Francisco newspaperman, wine connoisseur and fishing expert.

Part rogue, part imp, he’s got an irreverent sense of humor both about himself and the history he’s observed over 87 years.

Adams signed on at The Redwoods a few years back with retirement in mind. But “The Wines of America” needed updating, so his work continued. “Worn out?” he laughs. “Not as long as I’m excited.”

Things have slowed a bit since the fourth edition of his wine guide came out, so Adams has time now to tackle H. G. Wells’ “The Outline of History” or simply to sit back and gaze out his window at Mt. Tamalpais.

A stroke has slowed Adams physically, but he won’t be still. Like a fidgety kid he is in constant motion: lighting then drawing on his pipe, tapping his wing-tipped toes, laughing a laugh that must have rung through the newsroom 70 years ago when he was a cub reporter making 15 cents an inch.

Adams isn’t much for this aging thing. He’d rather be exploring Tibet or tasting Bordeaux or fishing for striped bass. Occasionally he looks up at his dinner companions and can’t help thinking: “My God, they’re old.”

But all in all, The Redwoods suits him. His bachelor’s quarters are filled with books, a trusty manual typewriter and a wall full of wonderful photos in which Adams looks every inch the matinee idol. He’s got four grown children to keep tabs on, and no shopping, cooking or laundry to bother with.

“I’ve got a cynical reporter’s sense of smell,” he says. “There are some places for old people where you can smell money and not much respect. But this place, well, I could smell right off that it was doggone nice.”

The Redwoods is not Utopia, and Marianne Gontarz would be the first to admit it. There are faces so vacant some days that she can nearly make out the dying soul behind them, far out of a social caseworker’s reach.

From time to time, Gontarz wonders what makes the difference among the residents she counsels, why some are so alive while others seem to be marking time. What makes a remarkable life?

It’s not so much fame or fortune. “Really, it seems like the most remarkable people are the ones who have accepted challenges all along the way,” says Gontarz, 44. “They’ve asked questions all their lives.”

“The thing to do--especially as you grow older--well, you must fight to keep learning,” says John Rose, an engineer by profession and hobo at heart. Rose’s education has extended over 100 countries through the years. Tall and unstooped with piercing eyes framed in thick silver hair and beard, he is Heathcliff at 80--dashing and fiery and a little bit magical.

A woman might be tempted to follow him anywhere, as his wife did for decades through the South Pacific, Asia, Europe, the Middle East. “Until, I guess, she got fed up,” says Rose, who is now on his own.

He’s studied psychology and religion, philosophy and politics. He’s got an opinion on everything and a mind open to everything. Today, he’s learning the art of book-binding. Tomorrow, he might study Burmese cooking.

But his main purpose at The Redwoods is to contemplate this next phase of life. He’s looking for an artful and intelligent way of making, as he blithely puts it, “the transition from being to nothingness.”

For a moment, nothingness hangs in the air. It’s the last stop. It could be scary, but it seems John Rose’s way in life also works in death.

“Finally, it’s all about freedom, isn’t it?” he says. “I’ve walked away from homes, just left them and started over somewhere else. And I found it cleansing. Freedom is in knowing when to hold on, and when to let go.”

Around the time she turned 83 last May, Gwynne Hill decided she was ready to retire at The Redwoods.

Exploration has been her life’s theme, from Jungian analysis back in the 1940s (“I learned to integrate my dark side . . . and met my first husband too!”) through becoming a octogenarian first-time author with the recent publication of her memoirs.

“I have no intention of getting old,” says Mrs. Hill, brushing a lock of silver hair behind her ear. “I want to GROW old. Growing is active, alive. And being alive makes all the difference.”