POCAHONTAS COUNTY, W.Va. –– For the past 17 years, in order to get home 74-year-old Joel Rosenthal must cross his white Dodge diesel truck across 450 feet of West Virginia’s Greenbrier River to reach his own personal oasis: The Point of View Farm.

“It’s like John Denver said, ‘Almost Heaven,’” Rosenthal says of his mountaintop property. “But when you cross the Greenbrier River and go to Point of View Farm, you can eliminate the almost. You have reached nirvana and you need not seek that out anywhere else.”

Point of View Farm is a nonprofit animal sanctuary where Rosenthal rehabilitates and releases injured and orphaned animals, and provides a permanent home for those that cannot be released. Bears are not the only wildlife he has on the farm, but they certainly draw the most attention.

“I have more bears right now than ever before,” he says, of the seven bears he cared for through the winter.

Some of the bears came to him on their own while others — like 7-year-old Rose — are brought to him by people who know of his services.

“Someone brought Rose to me when she was 8 weeks old,” he says.

Rosenthal’s method of caring for Rose was a bit different than what one might expect. Instead of placing her in one of the farm’s many enclosed pens, he first raised her inside his home for a couple months and released her after a year and a half. Rose doesn’t stay away for long, Rosenthal says she established the woods around the farm as her territory. She comes in and out every winter on her own accord.

“Fortunately, she comes in around hunting season and I can lock her up and keep her from getting out,” he says.

When she came in this winter, she wasn’t alone. On Jan. 17, she gave birth to Pedals and Bud.

“I feed them a mixture of dry food and trail mix and some apples,” Rosenthal says as he prepares a bucket of food in his kitchen. “The bigger bears, I give some cookies.”

He makes his way from the spacious three-story home with attached 1,000-square-foot greenhouse and floor to ceiling windows — he designed and had it built a few years after moving to the farm — and heads to the enclosures.

First, he feeds a slab of meat to 12-year-old black vulture Satch, a non-releasable bird he acquired from a sanctuary in Florida.

Then, he walks a few feet over and delivers a greeting.

“Hi, Rose,” he says, opening the pen.

His words are met with a high-pitched whine as a black bear slowly makes her way out to greet him.

While Rose enjoys her food, Rosenthal creeps a little deeper into her makeshift den, lying down with the cubs.

“Come over here, Rose,” he beckons. “Rose knows her name…,” he says, turning his attention back to the momma bear. “I’m going to play with your babies.”

And he does just that, gently lifting the small cubs in the air. Only one of the cubs has opened its eyes at this point in their young lives.

“They’re getting pretty big,” he says, holding out one cub at a time. “This one is Bud and the other one is Pedals.”

Rose, munching on a cookie, watches as Rosenthal cuddles her babies.

“I recognize she’s a wild bear,” he says. “We’ve gotten into some fights in the past.”

From Rose’s enclosure, Rosenthal walks over to feed 2-year-old Waffles, who, with his brother Muffin, came as an orphan cub. Waffles returned for the winter. Muffin did not.

It’s time to feed the “kids.” Koda, Sara and Boog, all about 14 months old, have grown up on the farm.

Just as Rosenthal says, the young bears are like kids, as they run out to explore as soon as he opens their enclosure.

“I go on hikes with them every day,” he says, explaining both he and the bears enjoy walking the property together.

For the most part, his young charges stick with him, but, like kids, they run around, climb trees, wrestle each other and splash around in some of the property’s 20 to 25 ponds.

These bears, like all the others, will make their way into the forest mid-Spring.

Rosenthal traces his love of animals back to his childhood days growing up in an apartment in Washington, D.C. He says his father made him a small cage that he would use to try to help injured birds.

When neighbors moved to a farm in Fairfax, Va., his family began visiting and the seed was planted.

“That was the very first dream I ever had in life was to have a farm,” he says.

A former scientist with the National Institutes of Health, Rosenthal first rehabilitated and released small animals on a half-acre property in suburban Maryland, but he says he knew it was time to go.

“It took me 57 years to get to the point where I really had to make this move to the farm because it was getting late so I started looking around,” he said.

At first, he wasn’t keen on the idea of navigating the “Amazon River” every time he wanted to leave his house, but them he changed his mind.

“I said it’s time to actuate this dream,” he says. “All my other dreams in life had come true. Making this one come true was important.”

The organization is set up in such away that when Rosenthal dies, the leadership position will pass on to an already selected board member.

For now, he’s the only person in West Virginia, he says, who does animal rehab legally.

“I still have to pinch myself every single day,” he says. “Not only can I not believe that I live this kind of life, but I can’t believe that I’ve ever been able to touch a bear let alone do all this stuff.”

James is the Lifestyles editor for the Beckley, West Virginia Register-Herald.