George Sam Gribley is tired of living in a crowded New York City apartment with
his dad,mom and 8 brothers and sisters, so he runs away looking for his
Great-grandfather Gribley’s land in the Catskill Mountain wilderness. The
Gribley land had not been inhabited by any Gribley’s for around 100 years. Sam
hitched rides trying to get to the farm. Sam thought he prepared himself for
this adventure by reading books in the New York City public library about how to
survive on the land. No one in his family took his plans seriously though. With
only a penknife, a ball of cord, forty dollars, and some flint and steel, he
relied on his own ingenuity and the resources of the land to survive. Sam
arrived in the Catskill’s and went to the Delhi library to find information
about Gribley’s farm. A nice librarian found information that was very old,
this helped Sam find the farm. This was the beginning of Sam’s great
adventure. On his great-grandfather’s farm he learns how to survive. At first
he struggles to make a fire, then he had trouble whittling wooden fishing hooks
to catch fish, but he ended up perfecting the hooks and catching a few fish. He
quickly realizes that he needs shelter; just building and staying around a
campfire won’t do, so he decides to set a fire inside a hemlock tree and
hollow himself out a room. Here he builds himself a little hidden home in the
forest. His tree home consists of a hidden door made of deerskin, a bed and a
fireplace to keep him warn in winter. People come to the forest and are all
around him, but they never discover him in his tree home. He struggled every day
to find food, only to find that frog legs and turtle soup aren’t bad food. He
also ate wild onions, acorns, apples, wild strawberries, and sometimes rabbit
that he manages to catch in some traps he had built. He finally spots a falcon
and decides to catch one of it’s babies in the hopes that he can train the
falcon. The falcon can then help him catch food. The falcon he caught he name
Frightful, because it was very frightening when the falcon’s mother tried to
attack him, to keep him from getting her baby. Sam spent many days training the
falcon. After Frightful became trained she was able to catch many small animals
and provide them with food. Sam also struggles with providing himself with
clothing. Fortunately for him, a hunter killed a deer in the woods and Sam got
to it first and hid it. Later Sam came back for it and eventually made himself a
pair of pants from its hide along with eating its meat. This happened a couple
of other times so that Sam was able to also make himself a shirt and a blanket
from deerskin. All the while, no one realized that Sam lived in the forest. Sam
eventually makes a friend he calls Bando, who turns out to be an English
professor who had gone exploring in the woods. Bando stays with Sam for the
summer and told him he would return at Christmas time. Sam really struggled
during the winter, he prepared by storing nuts in another tree close by and then
by cutting plenty of firewood And survive he does with only the animals to talk
to and Frightful for companionship. Around Christmas time, his friend Bando
returns. This time Bando told him that there had been stories circulating in New
York City about a wild boy living alone in the forest, but no one could prove
it. The stories became huge rumors, newspapermen were poking around the woods
trying to find the wild boy. Sam’s father realized from the newspaper that it
must be Sam they were talking about, so he decided to look for Sam. He finally
found Sam and ended up spending Christmas in the forest with Sam, Bando, and
Frightful. After Sam’s dad left to return to New York City, a newspaperman
named Matt Spelling came poking around the forest looking for the wild boy. Matt
was a smart guy and stumbled upon Sam, it didn’t take him long to figure out
that Sam was the wild boy the newspaper was referring to. Sam decided to give
Matt an account of his survival in the forest for his newspaper article, this
cleared up all the rumors of the wild boy theory. Not long afterwards, Sam’s
dad, his mom, and his brothers and sisters came to the Gribley’s land to live
with Sam. Sam’s mom like it so well, that she and Sam’s dad quickly made
plans to build a house for the whole family. Needless to say, they were very
proud of Sam for finding great-grandfather Gribley’s farm, for surviving in
the forest on his own, and for bringing them all out of the city.