Ada Blackjack Quotes

A land more severely solitary could hardly be found anywhere on the face of the globe. —JOHN MUIR, 1881

water sky

As she looked back, the trail behind her faded away and she was way up in the air, with no man behind her and only the smooth trail leading into the sky.

She had always covered her ears when the men fired their rifles because the sound was so violent and terrible. Now, as the birds soared past, she knew she must make a decision. Summoning all her courage, she pulled the trigger.

Death was constantly on her mind. She thought about it every time she looked at Knight's pale and haggard face--his sunken cheeks, his thin lips, his hollow eyes.

But I'm going now where it's always hot Where blizzards ain't and cold is not Where everyone's happy and anthems ringing But having no voice I'll be out of the singing Don't weep for me now, don't weep for me ever I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever. - Untitled Poem, Lorne Knight, Summer 1923

One night while Ada slept, the wind swept in and blew her skin boat out to sea. She had only used it twice, but she cried all day when she discovered it was gone. Then she cried all the next day and the next. It was too much. Ada was tired and she was weak and there was no one to help her. If she did not get up out of bed to forage for food, she would go hungry. If she did not light the fire, it would remain unlit. If she did not bring in the snow, there would be no water to drink. Eventually she grew tired of crying and pitying herself. She must get up and make another boat, and so she did.

Her world was lonely and silent. Now that there was open water, there was no longer the crash of the ice pack, the long, low grind of the floes churning against one another, the deep and sudden splash of water as masses of the pack broke off and plunged into the sea, or the staccato burst like rifle shots that echoed across the island as the ice expanded. There was only the sound of her own voice as she spoke to Vic. She fussed over the cat like a mother and picked up and held her in her arms and talked to her like she had talked to Crawford and the others. Vic was a warm, breathing creature, who responded in purrs and rubs and an occasional meow. Ada thought she would go insane without her.

She heard the man calling, "Keep to the left, if you want to get home and see your father and mother." But she kept running along the smooth road, and just then she looks back, and she is out of the sea and into the air; and as she looks back the trail behind her fades away... - Ada Blackjack, "The Lady in the Moon

Real history is made up from the documents that were not meant to be published. - Mrs. Rudolph Martin Anderson, in a letter to the mother of Allan Crawford, the young Canadian placed in charge of the Wrangel Island expedition party.

Is it possible that somewhere there are people even now being ostracized by their kind for eating olives with a fork or peas with a knife? People who judge a man by his grooming, his bank account, or his ancestry? Our new world has stripped us to the fundamentals; and it is salutary, if not a little humbling, to reflect that these fundamentals--intelligence, character, and health--are not peculiarly human, that they are the same with men, with horses, with dogs, and with ants. - Harold Noice, captain of the Donaldson, the ship that saved sole survivor Ada Blackjack of the Wrangel Island expedition, describing the Arctic