Introduction to the 1977 TV series...
Narration by the trapper, mountain man:
"They call me Mad Jack. And if there's anybody in these mountains that knows the real story of James Adams, that'd be me. So I'm puttin' it down into writin' just the way it happened in hopes of setting the records straight. My friend Adams was accused of a crime he didn't commit. So he escaped into the mountains, leaving behind the only life that he ever knew. Now that wilderness out there ain't no place for a green horn and his chances of survivin' were... mighty slim. Weren't no time at all before he was beaten down, ragged and nearly starved. Along about then, he come upon a grizzly bear cub, all alone and helpless. Now Adams knew that little critter couldn't survive without his help so he started right down that cliff, risking his own life, to save it. *chuckling* Now that cub took to Adams right off. And that was when he discovered, he had a... special kind of way with animals. They just come right up to him like he was a natural part of the wilderness. But that bear cub, he was extra special. And as he growed he became the best friend Adams ever had and together,... they became a legend."
Series Title Songtrack sung by Thom Pace "Deep inside the forest is a door into another land,
Here is our life and home,
We are staying, here forever in the beauty of this place all alone,
We keep on hoping...
Maybe, there's a world where we won't have to run, and Maybe, there's a time we'll call our own,
Living free in harmony and majesty,
Take me home,
Take me home.
Walking through the land where every living thing is beautiful,
why does it has to end.
We are calling.. oh so sadly on the whisper of the wind as we send,
a dying message."
Original Story- The Death and Dreams of Grizzly Adams
Mad Jack: "It's been fifteen years, I reckon, since me, the greenhorn, and that old bear Ben of his, first became friends. Another winter has me holed up on the south side of Beaver Meadow a few ridges away from where Nakoma family's has left a signal fire to mark out a special cache, for me to find. I have with me, my diary I've made about Adams. And this current month's entry by firelight may be the last I'll ever have the honor of laying a pen to, on the tale of James Capen Adams. I'm thawing out Nakoma's bundle that he left for me, of Adam's, but I'm scared to death of what I might find when I open it."
The bitter cold had long ago receded enough for the pain in Mad Jack's fingers to ease into the fine motions needed for appropriate quillin'. The trapper sighed as he proofread what he had just jotted down. Another dip into the yew berry ink suddenly became forgotten when the fire finally teased out a very familiar scent of acorn soaped hide and ceremonial herbs.
The white bearded, tan buckskin hide dressed old timer looked up from his driftwood bound desk inside the shanty in which he had taken refuge after his very last late fall trading trip through the pass for the year. The buffalo hide bundle was ready to share its heart. "Oh, All Mighty the Creator, Number Seven." said Mad Jack to his mule, sharing a fenced off stall near the fire, inside the solidly built claim of moss and river logs. "I ain't never wanted to be the one. Not for this. Not in a million years." The light gray Number Seven lifted his smokey head and brayed a clarion chorus of mule-ish sympathetic agreement. The smell of his oat mash breath was no comfort to Mad Jack when he set his feather pen aside and got up from his stool to go kneel stiffly by the blazing stone and pitch hearth.
Jack's fingers trembled as he untied the leather string and beaded lacing from around the still steaming hide. "This is theirs, Number Seven. Their blood brother bundle. No one should ever invade another man's privacy, but I'm the only one here, Lord willin', who can." Unthinking, Mad Jack's gnarled hand roamed to finger the strong scented, body ripe, prayer sack that he wore nestled around his neck. "I never thought this day would come. When his story,... finally comes to an end."
Summer.. Utah, Prospect River Ridge.
"Hey Natasha." said Grizzly Adams to a hooded red tailed hawk, sitting on a pine pole perch, just outside his cabin. "How's that leg doing today?"
he asked, reaching for her with a piece of dried fish jerky. Natasha sounded a string of frustrated shrieks, hungrily accepting the food. Adams smiled through his silver shot beard. "Don't worry. There's more where that came from. I've got a whole bowl here just for you." he sat, removing the leather sacking from around her eyes so the bird could reach down and feed herself with her beak and good talon.
Next to the rain barrel, Benjamin, the grizzly bear lifted his shaggy head and put up a grayed paw in a morning greeting that was both sleepy and mildly protesting. "Arrrgh? Ahwww..." Ben moaned, sniffing the air and drooling over what was in Adam's hands.
Adams the mountain man laughed long and hard at his companion's antics. "You never change, Ben. I haven't forgotten nothing. I've a trout right here with your name on it." he said, reaching into the rain barrel to quickly catch a flopping brown spot from the water. "All right you greedy old cuss, here's your breakfast. Eat before me. That's the only way I like it." he told Ben.
A curious raccoon ambled and climbed onto Adam's axe hewn pine slab picnic table and reared up with two paws, chittering.
Adams looked at his new visitor with an appraising eye. "Abel, now you're going to have to wait for yours. I ain't made up my flapjacks in bacon grease yet. But I promise I will. You go have yourself a good wash in the creekbed. I'll come join you in a minute." he told the coon. "Have you seen Maybelle?"
The racoon chattered again, affording the pink long johned and wool woven suspendered Adams a wave of his half puma chewed tail to the left as he scampered off the table and onto an upturned stump seat propped in the direction of the brook.
Adams glanced over and finally spotted the striped skunk, moving calmly through the dewy meadow grass and flowers by the fallen log Adams used as a canoe prop. "Ah, there you are, girl. Here, have your mushroom. It'll be good for those babies of yours, too." he told the black and white ball of fluff responding to the sound of his warm, inviting voice. He pulled out a large morel from a trousers pocket and tossed it to Maybelle, who immediately began feasting as she called in her brood to share.
"Now that's how to start a morning off right, Ben. Isn't that the truth?" he said, watching his furry friend peel off fish skin from his bite killed fish, daintily dining afterwards, with his overly long claws and yellow teeth. The bear moaned a polite reply.
Going back into the cabin, Adams found his hide towel and hand made soap so he could enjoy a good scrubbing down in the river. He returned outside, already gold with the rising dawn. "You should take a bath with me, Ben. You need one. You still have bits of honey comb in your fur from last night. Couldn't you have saved some of that honey for me? Your best friend?"
The grizzly did not answer, still balancing his mangled trout breakfast on all four of his feet as he rolled over onto his back to feast from where it was perched on his paws.
"I'll remember that the next time I go fishing." Adams promised. "You know, for a bear, you're not too smart when it comes to sharing things."
Adam's smile was only half extinguished when he walked past Ben and headed towards the water with his bathing gear. He had found a good spot just below the falls past the rapids when he heard a sudden screaming begin.
It was not a puma. Adams knew that the instant he broke into a dead run towards the yelling. "Ben!" he shouted to the bear. "Swim over to the other side of the river and see if you can spot anyone! Ben! Do you hear me? Go!" the mountain man commanded.
The grizzly obeyed out of love and because he understood the sounds of terror as meaning that something near by was in distress. The bear made the plunge and was swiftly across and running parallel to the shore to Adams' path, heading upstream towards the cascading water fall which was newly swollen from the previous day's rain.
"It's a child, Ben!" yelled Adams, running into the shallows at the base of the falls around the deep pool. He could hear the screams growing weaker, echoing around the rocks above him.
"I just know it!" Grizzly Adams felt helpless as he watched the cliff above for a change, any change, that would reveal the source of pain and suffering they could both hear.
Finally, a tan jerkin and a red ribboned form shot out over the falls limply, to land in the pool below.
Adams did not hesitate, he peeled off his shoulder bag and leaped into the amber depths after the tiny body he saw plunge down and down. She was caught in the undertow.
Only belatedly did Adams realize that he, too, could become trapped in the torrent beneath the falls. But he reached down anyway and grabbed the unconscious little native american child by the hair, to begin the long, slow fight to reach the surface.
Mad Jack: "There are times when a man can enjoy all the pleasures and gifts Mother Nature sees fit to provide with all cares tossed aside. But the moment that Adams had chosen to dive deep into a very angry rain swollen, river, wasn't the best decision he had ever made in his life. Not at all. To Adams, the sun seemed an impossible distance away, sparkling in the lurid caramel colored depths. And then he noticed the extreme cold, down where they were. It was sharp enough to sap a man's courage. He could feel his very life slipping away from his arms and legs and chest as he struggled against the mighty current that threatened to batter them against the rocks, again and again. His lungs were about to burst when Adams felt a great strength lift him and his small burden up towards the sunlight. And air."
Adams jolted awake from where he felt himself getting dragged up onto the beach by the back of his collar. "Oh, it's you, Ben. Where is she?! Come on now, I'm all right. Let go of me. I need to get to that little girl. She needs me!"
Startled by the tone of Adams voice, Ben opened his mouth. He groaned a question and moved aside.
It was only then Adams saw the small soggy child lying face down at the base of a fallen birch bark log on shore. Scrambling to the muddy child's side, he pulled her up on top of the log and listened over her chest. "Oh, no. She's drowning, Ben! Go to the cabin. Go get Jack, Ben! We're gonna need his help right away."
"RrrrRR?" murmured the grizzly.
"Go, now!"
Ben immediately loped into the high country, heading directly for home.
Quickly, Adams draped the girl face down over the log. He began to slide her back and forth over the rough bark until her chest and stomach were being squeezed and released by the pressure of movement. A minute later, a great gout of water flooded out of the child's mouth and she began gasping and choking for air. Adams swept her up onto his lap and draped her into a seated bear hug to provide her with some immediate warmth. He held her pale face gently between his hands. "That's it. Keep breathin'. You're out of the water. It's okay. I got you, little one."
The tiny child finally began to cry, her voice trembling with her shivering and her wheezing.
Mad Jack : "Grizzly Adams didn't mind the sick up which followed and stained his knees soon after. All he cared and hoped for in those first precious moments was for the life of that tiny girl in his arms. She was so much like Peg, his own daughter that he had left behind in the old country, that it brought tears to his eyes as bundled her up using the hide he had packed into his bath satchel. The tiny girl was so tired that she passed out, giving Adams a new fright on top of the old. But a fast check showed that her tiny lungs were still doing their work of keep her small body alive and well. Adams knew that shock was right around the corner and that they were not out of danger yet."
"I've got to start a fire." Adams said, laying the buckskin wrapped child inside a thick tangle of sunwarmed meadow grass. "And right quick, too. But how? My tinder's all wet from the river spray."
Mad Jack: "It was only now Adams experienced a flashback, in his blind panic. It was one of Nacoma from six years ago while Adams was being taught how to survive in the woods."
A richly furred Nakoma patiently pointed at a nearby rotted stump while a coatless, shivering Adams danced and rubbed his own bare arms, trying to stave off frostbite in his wet clothes.
Mad Jack: "It was nigh on late December. And it would be a thing of great dishonor should Adams fail the Trial Of Snow. His mind growing numb with the chill, Adams obeyed Nakoma at the last second, his fingers finding the crisp husk of a dried out wasp nest left over from last summer. My friend forgot convention. D*mn near forgot all sense as he thrust the wrinkled pulpy mass of bee scraps up into the sky swirling in a full white out fury of a blizzard. "I did it!" laughed Adams at his solemn ring of elders and Nakoma. That chief only winced once at the break of tradition. But he was a good forgiving soul and so he overlooked the greenhorn's exuberance. It tw'ern't no time at all before he struck up a flint, and a spark caught into a flame. The flame of life."
Hurrying, Adams left his tiny charge. He found a beehive stump just like the one from so many years ago that finally made him a man in his blood brother's tribe's eyes. Luck was with him and both hands pulled out a wasp nest the size of a giant racoon. He cocked an ear for the repeated wheeze of little girl's ragged breaths as she fought the water still in her chest as he worked. A single brisk rub of flint on a piece of steel, axe chopped from one of Number Seven's discarded horse shoes, was all it took to ignite the paper into a large ball of fire.
Mad Jack: "You know, feeding a fire is a simple thing, really. Like feeding a baby. Bit by bit. Scrap by scrap. Only then can you cook up some serious vittles."