The Enchanted Forest

A pastoral fantasy about a hermit who prefers the serene company of the woods and its denizens to the world outside. Old John, the hermit, has been communing with nature in the sylvan fastness of a California redwood grove for so long that he is linguistically in rapport with such animals as a crow, an eagle, a frog, a dog and a puma. Saving the forest owners' grandson from a raging stream after a trainwreck, Old John raises the infant to childhood. And it is only after a series of melodramatic developments that the youngster rejoins his bereaved mother and Old John is assured that his beloved forest will remain primeval.