Hank Williams Jr. reflects on near-fatal fall: 'I am a very blessed and thankful man'

Hank Williams Jr. is feeling grateful to be alive on the anniversary of a near-death experience.

On Aug. 8, 1975, after recording his breakthrough album "Hank Williams Jr. & Friends," the singer and a friend hiked Ajax Peak in Montana. Williams, 26 at the time, fell more than 500 feet during the trek.

A helicopter was forced to land about a quarter of a mile away from the accident scene. All told, the rescue took six hours, with six men carrying Williams to the helicopter, which flew him to Missoula Community Hospital. There, Williams spent over seven hours in surgery — led by a team of five doctors — for head and facial injuries.

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"48 years ago today 530 feet and 17 operations later this picture says it all," Williams captioned an Instagram post Tuesday, with a photo of the precarious drop. "I am a very blessed and thankful man."

When Williams awakened in his hospital room, he had two special visitors: his godmother, June Carter Cash, and her husband, Johnny Cash.

"When I fell, there were only two people I saw when I woke up in the hospital bed, and that was Johnny and June," Williams told Rolling Stone in 2015. "June put a cross on me and told me it was all going to be OK. I never knew if I would sing again or not, talk again or not, let alone think about what I was going to look like. It was a scary time."

Last year, as a guest on The Bobby Bones Show, Williams, now 74, said he didn't think he would survive the fall and that he remembers "every bit" of the incident.

The artist referenced the fall in his 1980 track, "All in Alabama," singing about climbing "up old Ajax Mountain." "I made it up to the top, picked out a clear spot // I thought a whole lot about the rest of my life // I had no idea then, soon it would nearly end // Up on this mountainside, I would nearly die"

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson referenced the tune in a comment on Williams' post.

"As a kid I knew every word to 'All in Alabama', but only when I got older did I realized what every word actually meant to you," Johnson wrote, adding some of the song's significant lyrics: "You gotta say things you wanna say // Go on and do things your own way // And you can climb any old mountain // Once you make up your mind."

Contributing: Karen Grigsby, The Tennessean

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hank Williams Jr. on mountain accident: I'm a 'thankful man'