Ep 2: Ada Alone

Summary

WHAT TO CARRY, WHAT TO BURN
Ep 2: Ada Alone
Host: Blair Braverman
Guest: Sarah Marshall
Release Date: May 12, 2026

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Overview

This gripping episode concludes the saga of Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat woman who endured an Arctic year isolated on Wrangel Island. Host Blair Braverman and guest Sarah Marshall trace Ada’s journey from hope to heartbreak, then extraordinary resilience, illuminating what powerful and often overlooked survival truly looks like. The episode probes the line between adventure and abandonment, the transformative power of hope and love, and how resourcefulness—and even moments of joy—emerge amid the bleakest circumstances.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. After the Dark: New Friendships and the Promise of Rescue

• Ada and Gaul’s Friendship: As the long Arctic night ends, Ada finds comfort in her friendship with the youngest crew member, Gaul, teaching him her language and stories. This provides her with purpose and respect, vital in staving off homesickness (01:22).
  • “She starts teaching him stories and legends...the stories about polar bears. This feeling of being respected for her makes a huge difference.” —Blair Braverman (01:22)
• Survival Details: The crew manages, eating mostly seal, dealing with subzero temperatures, and losses among their sled dogs—but the cat Vic thrives. (02:21)
• Anticipation for Rescue: With spring, hope hinges on the ship’s return. Ada longs for her son, and everyone prepares for new supplies and possible departure. (06:32, 07:58)

2. Stefansson’s Failure and the World’s Indifference

• Failed Leadership: Expedition leader Stefansson reveals his plans to the world, receiving only international scorn and little support. He scrambles for funds, ultimately securing barely enough for an attempted relief mission. (04:33–13:21)
  • “The verdict’s still out.” —Blair Braverman, on Stefansson’s mindset (04:58)
• Relief Mission Fails: The ‘Teddy Bear’ ship, laden with supplies, is forced to turn back due to impenetrable ice. Stefansson considers, then rejects, the arduous Siberia-to-Wrangel over-ice dog sled rescue. (13:21–15:35)
  • “Does he [go]? ...He decides not. Not to bother.” —Blair Braverman (15:26–15:36)

3. Descent Into Crisis: Scarcity, Illness, and Difficult Choices

• Dwindling Resources: The crew’s supplies wane, and Knight begins to show signs of scurvy—painfully aware of his own impending illness (10:53).
  • “He’s starting to have more symptoms, too, so chunks of his gums are starting to fall off, which is just an actual nightmare.” —Blair Braverman (21:19)
• Attempts at Escape: Crawford and Knight resolve to sled to Siberia for help—a desperate 200-mile trek—only to be defeated by storm, exhaustion, and illness. They return, badly frostbitten, with no rescue achieved (22:47–28:24).
  • “Their faces are literally black from frostbite. Like they’ve turned to leather.” —Blair Braverman (26:31)

4. Isolation, Gender, and Social Dynamics

• Splintering Group: With hope dwindling, a new plan: three leave again (Gaul, Mar, Crawford) to try Siberia; Ada is left alone with the now bed-bound Knight and the cat, with no dogs or real company beyond ailing Knight (33:14 ff).
• Gendered Scrutiny: Knight anxiously journals about the potential stigma of being stranded alone with a woman, reflecting the era’s moral norms (32:02–33:11).
  • “He writes in his journal... circumstances sometimes demand actions that would be reprehensible on the outside.” —Blair Braverman (32:02)

5. Ada Alone: Crushing Loss, Reluctant Heroism

• Profound Loss: Ada is devastated by Gaul’s departure, keeping a journal in his absence: “Why Gaul leave.” (34:07)
• All on Her: With Knight incapacitated, Ada single-handedly maintains the camp, faces hunger, and braves polar bear country to hunt—armed only with a knife due to her fear of guns. (35:06–37:47)
• Learning Under Fire: She innovates, teaches herself to trap foxes, hunt, and (ultimately) even shoot a gun—overcoming childhood taboos and extreme fear. (49:46–50:24)
  • “She’s just picking up a gun and she is teaching herself to shoot without any instruction.” —Blair Braverman (49:46)

6. Hope, Despair, and the Invisibility of Heroism

• Knight’s Decline, Ada's Devotion:
  • Ada cares for Knight even as he becomes irritable and cruel under the duress of scurvy (47:06–48:21).
  • Knight journals about his suffering, at times with dark humor and understated despair: “If anyone has ever hankered for anything, I hanker for fresh raw meat and lots of it. Come on, bear.” (40:27)
• Personal Agency: Ada starts writing her own journal and even uses the late Gaul’s forbidden typewriter to document her struggle—she also takes self-portraits (54:01).
• Innovation as Resistance: Builds a skin boat from scratch so she can try to hunt walrus, invents a viewing platform for bears, all while caring for herself and Knight. (50:24–51:18)

7. Love as a Survival Skill

• Acts of Care & Artistry:
  • Ada sews a “fancy” new parka with decorative touches, emphasizing that beauty and hope are as essential as warmth (54:47–56:23).
  • She lovingly makes beadwork slippers for her faraway son, investing her hope and love into each stitch (58:18–59:45).
    • “If I should go home, he can put slippers on.” —Ada’s journal (58:24)
  • Both hosts agree these moments are revolutionary in survival narratives, often overlooked in stories focused on men or on masculine skills (56:46–57:07).

8. Rescue and Aftermath

• Final Ordeal: Alone, Ada outlasts the Arctic isolation, subsisting only on her own traps, eggs, and skill, until finally, a ship arrives and she’s saved (60:08–61:02).
• Heartbreaking Postscript: Despite survival, Ada’s story is sensationalized and claim-jumped by men in power (Noyce and Stefansson), and her own writings are redacted and misused (62:05–62:22).
• Bittersweet Returns: Ada returns to her son, brings him needed treatment with her earnings, treasures Knight’s gifted Bible, and is remembered by her family as an extraordinary survivor (63:22–63:56).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Scandal and Survival:
  “He used these redacted parts to sell a very scandalous story about how she was actually there as a sex worker...which, first of all, and what if she was?...Certainly the work of surviving and keeping everyone else alive was the main part, no matter what.”
  – Sarah Marshall (62:21–62:28)

• On What Survival Requires:
  “Love is a survival skill, not just for the person being loved, but also for the person who’s doing the loving.”
  – Blair Braverman (64:40)

• On Endurance and Agency:
  “She had to put herself into the wilderness in order to survive, that is, in order to keep her family together and in order to take care of her son. Which means that Wrangel Island is one episode in what’s ultimately the survival story of her life.”
  – Blair Braverman (64:05)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Ada and Gaul’s Bond, Daily Life: 01:06–03:27
• Stefansson’s World Announcement & Fallout: 04:33–06:08
• Relief Mission Fails: 13:21–15:45
• Knight’s Scurvy Progression: 21:19–22:31
• First Siberia Escape Attempt Fails: 26:31–28:24
• Division Decision, Ada Left Alone: 33:14–34:11
• Ada’s Solitary Routine & Resourcefulness: 35:06–37:47, 49:46–51:18
• Transforming Suffering with Fancy Parka and Beadwork: 54:47–59:45
• Rescue Arrival: 60:08–61:02
• Controversy and Afterlife of Ada’s Story: 62:05–63:22

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Ada Blackjack’s Enduring Legacy

The episode closes by reflecting on the blurry boundaries of “survival stories,” the undervalued skills of love, hope, and craft, and Ada’s unique position: both a victim of exploitation and a paragon of courage. Her tale, rarely centered in traditional survival lore, emerges as a testament to creativity, devotion, and the relentless pursuit of home.

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Summary prepared for listeners who wish to immerse themselves in Ada’s story, grasp the stakes and lessons of her ordeal, and appreciate how survival sometimes means thriving against all odds, quietly and beautifully.

Transcript

[Sarah Marshall]

Men are like chickens, you know, they really like to hide grievous injuries for a long time.

[Blair Braverman]

Welcome back to this brand new podcast, what to Carry, what to burn. I'm your host, Blair Braverman, and I'm going to be telling incredible true stories of survival. This episode is part two, the conclusion of Ada Blackjack's story. If you haven't heard part one, go back to the previous episode, the first episode of this podcast, and listen to that first if you've already listened. Welcome back. We're gonna jump right in. When we left off in the last episode, the sun had just risen for our friends on Wrangel island and Ada's doing well. The guys are happy. They've made it through the dark part of winter. They're counting down until summer when the ship is going to come. The best part of this time for Ada is that she and Gal are becoming really good friends.

[Sarah Marshall]

Now, which one is Gaul?

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, Gal is the youngest one there. He's the 19 year old. He's not even getting paid. He hasn't even turned 20 yet. He just wants to eat candy. He's like eating his 26 boxes of candy up in the high Arctic.

[Sarah Marshall]

He's a teen arctic explorer.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, he's like so nice and he's so earnest and he just wants to learn. And so he comes up to Ada and he says, will you teach me a nupiat? And she's so excited and she starts giving him lessons. Not just the language, but she starts teaching him stories and legends that she grew up with. The stories about polar bears. This feeling of being respected for her makes a huge difference. And they also, you know, he's a young kid there. He's. He's kind of at the bottom of the pecking order. But these two really care about each other a lot and they respect each other a lot. And especially for Ada, who's just been so homesick this whole time, every day she just wakes up, she wants to be home. She's thinking about Bennett, but at least now she's with Gaul and she's using her language and she has something to distract her and she feels like she has an ally.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. How long have they been there? At this point, approximately, they've been there

[Blair Braverman]

for like seven or eight months.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay.

[Blair Braverman]

They're also. It's really, really cold outside. At one point, it's minus 47.5 degrees. And that's the air temperature, not the wind temperature, which would be colder, of course. So they're mostly just inside their shelters. They're like darting outside to get wood and take care of the dogs. Unfortunately, also, another one of the dogs has passes away at this point, so they're down to. They're down to five. This is sad because, of course, they were attached to the dog, and it's also challenging because now they have a lot less dog power to carry wood and carry meat and the other things that they need to haul around the island. Right. On the bright side, if you remember the cat, Vic, Vic is doing fantastic.

[Sarah Marshall]

What's Vic eating?

[Blair Braverman]

Vic is. I don't know, mice. Vic is, like, outside hunting, no matter how cold it is.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Vic is just living life. Vic is doing better than anybody.

[Sarah Marshall]

I would want to watch a whole movie about an arctic explorer cat, you know, just from the cat's perspective.

[Blair Braverman]

I think there's a book like that.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay. All right, I got it. Yeah, I want that.

[Blair Braverman]

As the days are getting longer, the sun is up more, it's getting warmer. Their snow house. The walls of their snow house actually start to melt. So they're, like, living in kind of a puddle. They have to move out of their snow house, move back to the tents. Things are changing. The seasons are changing, and they're just coasting until summer when the ship comes. This is senior spring for the explorers, and they're having fun.

[Sarah Marshall]

Can I tell you something? I find I have a very hard time with hopes being dashed as a specific narrative element. So I'm just white knuckling it over here, but, yes. Tell me.

[Blair Braverman]

Goll and knight are exploring. They're hunting a bunch of seal. They have so much seal. They're trying to hunt walrus, but they don't have a skin boat. And so that makes it really hard. They don't have a boat that they can carry over the ice and.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. Because they were on a poorly organized adventure and departed hastily for reasons not their fault.

[Blair Braverman]

Overall, though, they are having a pretty good time. So let's leave them here and go back to our enemy Stefanson for a little bit.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, Stefanson.

[Blair Braverman]

Oh, Stefanson. If you remember, he was keeping this expedition a secret because he thought basically, oh, my God, everyone's gonna want wrangle island. If they know I'm colonizing it, they're gonna beat me to it. It's gonna be a gold rush. I have to get there first.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's interesting that the cause, like, if he really thinks that, then that suggests this is more of a delusion than a scam or a delusional scam, which is the worst kind.

[Blair Braverman]

The verdict's still Out. Now that the team's been on the island for. For quite a while, Stephenson decides, okay, it's safe to say something. And he makes a public announcement.

[Sarah Marshall]

This.

[Blair Braverman]

This does not go as well as he'd hoped. Nobody's impressed. In fact, everyone is. Is pissed. So he's claimed the island for Canada, but Canada actively doesn't want it. They do not want it. They're like, please, please don't. Why did you do this? The United States is angry because it got claimed for Canada. Britain is upset because they're implicated and they think the U.S. is going to be mad at them. The U.S. state Department makes an official announcement that's like, okay, you know what? Not only does Wrangle island have zero value, absolutely no value at all, but also this valueless chunk of land belongs to Russia. Stephenson's hope was that once he made this announcement, all the governments would be so excited that they would give him the money to complete the expedition and send a ship back to the island. Oh, sweetie, it's completely the opposite. Everyone is pissed.

[Sarah Marshall]

And all the other countries are upset with him because it's just so weird.

[Blair Braverman]

And summer is short. Summer in the Arctic is really short. So there's just a really brief window of time where the sea ice is going to be melted enough that a ship can even get back there.

[Sarah Marshall]

Ugh, I'm so stressed.

[Blair Braverman]

I'm sorry. I'm so.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's okay. It's not your fault. You've never organized an expedition and then pretended to forget about it.

[Blair Braverman]

Stefanson has this ticking clock. He doesn't know what to do.

[Sarah Marshall]

He should start selling daguerreotypes of his feet, I would say. I'm sorry.

[Blair Braverman]

Go on. Back on the island. Ada Crawford, Gaul, Mara Knight. The five of them have been completely cut off from the world for almost a year. It's late spring, and all they're thinking about is the ship. Every day, they're just watching the ocean. The ocean is still frozen over, which really stresses them out because they want to see the sea ice break up. But they tell themselves, like, okay, the ice is going to move in time. The ship's going to get in. Every night they hang a lantern outside so if the ship approaches during the night, it'll know where to go. And remember, the ship is going to do a couple things. So it's going to pick up Ada and bring her back to Nome, which is all she wants, is to just go back and be with her son. The men can choose to leave, but at this point, they're all thinking they'll probably stay for a second year. It's just that in order to do that they're going to need more food, more potatoes, onions, bullets. For hunting. They're running low on bullets. They need bullets also for protection from polar bears. The ship's going to bring more sled dogs. Cuz now they're down to five and that's not really enough. They have burned most of the driftwood around their camp so now they have to travel a really long way to get more firewood, which obviously is very necessary. They're going through firewood a lot, but with only five dogs, it's a lot harder to travel miles for firewood. So it's. They need the ship badly and, and

[Sarah Marshall]

they're at risk of injuring the dogs if they put, you know, have them carry too much weight. Is that a factor too?

[Blair Braverman]

I think any dog or person who's doing anything could get injured. But it's not, it's more like the dogs would just be slow and be tired.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay. I also, I feel like this might seem like an incredibly obvious observation, but that is my favorite kind. And also I feel like just if you have a child who's waiting for you and who is also expecting you to be back and at a specific time, then like, I don't know, your stress over their stress could be quite great, you know.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, their families are very worried. Their families are writing to Stefansson all the time and he's just, you know, saying it's all great. They're still hunting with moderate success. So the food they have most of is seal, seal oil, like the seal blubber that's sort of been rendered. I'm going to be real with you that the village where I lived in Norway was a historic seal hunting village. So I've had seal and I've been around a lot of people who grew up eating seal. And it is a potent meat. It has a taste. It is like if someone's been eating seal, it's like microwaving fish in an office. You walk into that room and you're like, someone ate seal. So they are just,

[Sarah Marshall]

they're eating a lot of seal. They're trying to perhaps trying to find, find the seal notes beneath the other seal notes. Becoming seal connoisseurs.

[Blair Braverman]

I'll tell you an aside. This is slightly, slightly not safe for work story.

[Sarah Marshall]

But okay.

[Blair Braverman]

When I was, when I was living in that village and I was working with sled dogs and I was working for a musher who had an old ice cream truck that he had turned into a freezer for the dog meat. And one day, he's like, blair, you should clean out. Clean out the ice cream truck. And. And I had to climb on my hands and knees into the freezer compartment, and there were just boxes of meat. And he was like, some of this meat has been there for, like, 15 years. Can you take it all out? And I get to the back, I'm on my hands and knees in the dark, and I get this box, and I sort of pull it out and look with my headlamp, and it says Sealcocks on it. And I'm like, hilarious joke. Hilarious joke. Like, this is. Of course, someone just thought it would be hilarious to write that on the box. And then I opened it, and that's indeed what it was.

[Sarah Marshall]

You're like, I don't know what I expected.

[Blair Braverman]

And so all the dogs got a special treat. Little freezer burned.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, that's really nice. Yeah. What are you gonna do?

[Blair Braverman]

So that I can't help but think about this while I'm. While I'm just learning about all the seal that they're eating.

[Sarah Marshall]

Sealcocks. That's a good thing to exclaim when you burn yourself or something.

[Blair Braverman]

Are you gonna start doing that?

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm gonna try, yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Anyway, speaking of meat and nutrients, Knight, in particular, is starting to have a problem. His hip is really hurting him, and he's trying to hide it. He's trying to go around like nothing's wrong. But it's getting hard for him to haul wood. It's hard for him to do his other chores. And he's starting to suspect secretly that he's getting scurvy. And he knows this because he's had scurvy before. He's like, oh, I know these symptoms. But in the past, he recovered. He's reassuring himself. He's like, okay, the ship's gonna come soon with fresh food. I'm not gonna worry anyone. I'm gonna be fine. As soon as I get some potatoes or something, my sore hip will go away. So he just keeps that completely private.

[Sarah Marshall]

Man.

[Blair Braverman]

Back to Stephenson. He reaches out to the explorer's parents and asks them for money to pay for the ship.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, good for him. Honestly. He's gotta ask somebody for it that isn't the U.S. government.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, but also, like, just think, if you're those families, and someone's like, your kid's going to be abandoned on Wrangle island unless you give me everything you have, it's practically a ransom.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Yeah, Right.

[Blair Braverman]

The families are digging deep they are sending Stephenson the money they have, and it is not enough.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

He still cannot afford a ship, so he goes to the Canadian government and he's like, look, I know. I know I'm not your favorite person right now. I get that you're not going to fund this trip for political reasons, but will you fund it for humanitarian reasons? And he's. He's very careful with his language. He's like, it is not a rescue trip. This is not a. They do not need rescue. They're in the friendly Arctic. This is a relief trip.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yes, they need to be rescued from the fun time they're having. We're worried they're partying a little too hard.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, yeah. We're just going to relieve them. We're not going to rescue them. Just. Let's just send some food, like, as a bonus. But they're totally fine. I didn't do anything wrong. Canada is like, God, this. This dude. Okay, you can have $3,000, which is half of what he's asked for. Stefansson takes the money. It's. It's barely enough. He rushes to Nome. He finds a captain with a ship called the Teddy Bear. And the captain says, okay, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna head out over there. It's already late August, so he's gotta rush before the sea ice freezes completely over again.

[Sarah Marshall]

Cause today's the day the teddy bear has its picnic.

[Blair Braverman]

They stock up the teddy bear, they fill it with food and bullets and people and dogs and newspapers and letters, and it sets off and it cannot move through the sea ice. The ice is just slicing into the wood of the ship. No. And the captain just turns around. He's like, I'm going to risk my life and the life of my crew if I continue. I can't do it.

[Sarah Marshall]

It does feel like a teddy bear would give up easily. If you're going to personify a ship, I feel like they could have named it, like, the Anvil or something.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, those teddy bears, they don't do so well in the sea ice.

[Sarah Marshall]

The steaming hot cup of tea. That's a good thing to name a ship that has to go through ice.

[Blair Braverman]

The Cuppa. So the relief mission has now failed. The ship did get close to Wrangel island, and it got close enough to see that, okay, there is solid sea ice around the island. And so now that Stefanson knows that, he has one more option.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay.

[Blair Braverman]

And that option is he can go to Siberia and he can pack a dog sled with Supplies and then he can dog sled over the sea ice to Wrangel island and check on the crew. He can make sure they're okay.

[Sarah Marshall]

How far would that be?

[Blair Braverman]

Like 200 miles is what.

[Sarah Marshall]

What do you think? Would you make that trip?

[Blair Braverman]

I think Stephenson should.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, yeah, but in terms of like. Like, what's it like to go over sea ice, I guess is my question.

[Blair Braverman]

The sea ice that I've mushed over has been pretty flat and smooth, but it can change quickly. There's currents the ice can break, it can. Big pieces of it can drift away with you on them. When the ice cracks and then gets pushed together, it can form these really jagged obstacles that you have to go over. And there's also openings of, you know, just open water you have to cross. It's difficult and it's dangerous, especially on an ungroomed trail. Yeah, but you know, Stefanson would be setting out fresh. He could have a whole bunch of dogs. He could have really good supplies. It's plausible he could do it. And it's certainly. He has a responsibility to.

[Sarah Marshall]

Let's go.

[Blair Braverman]

Does he, Stefanson?

[Sarah Marshall]

No.

[Blair Braverman]

It's a lot of work. They're fine. He decides not.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, no.

[Blair Braverman]

Not to bother.

[Sarah Marshall]

No. Always hitting snooze on his whole Arctic mission. This is really not good.

[Blair Braverman]

Just like that, the summer's over.

[Sarah Marshall]

No. Oh, I hate it.

[Blair Braverman]

The explorers hate it too. They hold out hope way longer than is practical. But, like, by October, they're reconciling themselves to the fact that Stefanson is not coming. Help is not coming. They are not going to get more food. Ada's not going to get to go home. They all respond to this news in different ways. Ada is just heartbroken. She's destroyed. She has been completely fixated on getting back to Bennett at the end of the year. She's going to bring the money. She was going to get a medical care. It is tearing her apart that she can't do that. And she becomes very withdrawn and quiet. She copes by just doing her work silently. She's very depressed. She tries to distract herself by knitting, by just passing the time. But they're looking at a whole nother year before maybe a ship will come. Right now, they can't take it for granted that a ship will come next year either. Crawford and Knight start going off alone and whispering to each other. They won't let anyone else over here. They're just secrets because they don't want to scare anyone. They have a bit more experience and they both know that they don't have enough food. They have a, they have a little bit left, but it's not going to get all five of them through the winter. If they all try to do that, they're going to starve to death. They come up with an idea which is that the two of them, Crawford and Knight, are going to kind of sacrifice themselves. So remember that trip, you remember that trip from Siberia that Stephenson decided not to take? Crawford and Knight think, okay, what if we take that in reverse, we just pack up a little bit of food, we take all five dogs and we try to mush to Siberia from this direction. That means not only do they have to cross 200 miles of sea ice, but then once they get to shore, they would have to mush 5, 500 miles south to a wireless station. And then once they get to the wireless station, they could call for help and arrange rescue for everyone else. Here's the thing about dog sledding. If you're in perfect conditions, if your dogs are super fit, if they're getting 10,000 calories a day, you can travel a hundred miles a day. But this is the opposite of perfect conditions. There's going to be absolutely no trail. So they're navigating, there's no directions, of course.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

And they also are going to be on ungroomed snow. When the snow isn't packed and you're trying to get over it with a dog team, the dogs are like swimming in powder. It's very hard for them to move forward, let alone pull. And then the sled is unstable, it's top heavy and it'll just constantly be rolling onto its side or flipping over. The snow is just going to collapse beneath it unevenly. So it takes an incredible amount of muscle to keep the sled upright. Maybe someone's going to be breaking trail in front of the dogs. Just like trudging through thigh deep powder like this is going to be extraordinarily slow going, especially because the dogs are weak, the people are weak, they have no shelter, they're low on supplies. Every one of those miles is going to be exhausting. Now, if Stefansson did it, he would still have those challenges, but he would have the advantage of a nicer sled and more supplies and more food and fresh dogs. So it would be still challenging, but easier for him to do it from the other side. Yeah, Night in particular really doesn't want to make this trip. He's just thinking and thinking and trying to come up with another option and they really can't think of any other way for all of them to survive, especially because something weird has happened to the animals this year. So last year, there were animals all over. There were foxes, and there were walrus and there were polar bear. They were just always around, like, annoyingly around. And this year, there's nothing. Just all the animals are gone.

[Sarah Marshall]

God. Okay, well, that doesn't seem great.

[Blair Braverman]

I mean, maybe the animals figured out, oh, there's people here, so we'll just go to the other side of the island. Maybe. Maybe it's just a general migration, like the. The prey animals sort of move to the other side, and then the predators follow them and. But whatever the reason, all the animals are gone. There's nothing to hunt.

[Sarah Marshall]

They're like, hey, we've noticed we're getting eaten a lot more than usual over here.

[Blair Braverman]

Night and Crawford come to the others, and they announce their plan. Everyone thinks it's scary, but they all start working really hard. A is sewing as fast as she can. She's going to make sure they have warm clothes. They're repairing their parkas. They're repairing dog harnesses. They're, like, beefing up the dog sled. The dogs are skinny, so. So they're trying to fatten up the dogs. All they have for them really is, like, bear skin and seal skin. These dogs need serious calories, as do the people, and they just don't have the food. Yeah, they pack the dog sled with 30 days worth of seal blubber and pilot bread.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay.

[Blair Braverman]

Pilot bread is like this indestructible cracker that you can keep for a long period of time and then every other supply they think they might need. And the sled weighs 700 pounds.

[Sarah Marshall]

That sounds like a lot of pounds.

[Blair Braverman]

It's a lot of pounds. Five weak dogs pulling 700 pounds over ungroomed trail. I'm sure the men weren't planning to ride on the sled, so that means they're walking beside it, they're going to be pushing it, they're going to be stabilizing it. At certain points, they'll probably be putting on a harness and pulling the sled. With the dogs, it's just an incredibly heavy load.

[Sarah Marshall]

Mm.

[Blair Braverman]

Also, Knight's hip keeps getting worse. He's starting to have more symptoms, too, so chunks of his gums are starting to fall off, which is just an actual nightmare.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I think I've had that one.

[Blair Braverman]

Do you know about scurvy?

[Sarah Marshall]

I know a little bit about scurvy, but please tell me all about scurvy.

[Blair Braverman]

I feel like it exists in Sort of the cultural ether, but it's caused by a lack of vitamin C, so a lack of fresh food, which is why, famously, sailors get it. Or if you only eat ramen for many months, maybe you'll get it too. Basically, without vitamin C, your body can't make collagen, which is what holds all your tissue together. So all your tissue starts just coming apart.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Old wounds that have healed over with collagen reopen. If you have a broken bone, it can, like, pop back open. Your skin doesn't have any elasticity. Your gums are coming apart. So it's. It's a slow process of losing all the connective tissue in your body.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. So you're, like, disintegrating basically a little bit.

[Blair Braverman]

That's a. An apt description. I think you're.

[Sarah Marshall]

You're doing a light Death becomes her still.

[Blair Braverman]

Night is not telling anyone else about this.

[Sarah Marshall]

Men are like chickens, you know, they really like to hide grievous injuries. For a long time, I'm always saying

[Blair Braverman]

that Night thinks he's going to be able to hide the symptoms and make the trip. He actually writes a letter to Stefanson. Obviously he can't send it, but he's writing it and he says, I am not afraid of starving to death or freezing, thanks to the things I have been taught by you. Oh. On January 7, as the sun is coming back up toward the horizon, Knight and Crawford take the dogs and they leave. I don't know when I'm thinking about this, it seems like a really interesting dynamic. Like, do you want to be the people who are just sitting there waiting at camp? I mean, not sitting there, but waiting at camp. They're safer, but things are very hard and they can't do anything. Or do you want to be the people trying to go out and cross the sea? So Knight and Crawford are, like, taking this big risk, but they're also going on a journey and they're moving forward. And I think that's pretty mentally helpful. I don't know. Who would you want to be, Sarah?

[Sarah Marshall]

I would want to still be at the camp because I think my survival instinct is to cling to whatever works, kind of often at the expense of something that is a risk but could lead to something better. And so to me, that's a less threatening position to be in instinctually.

[Blair Braverman]

Ooh. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

Even though it might be certain death,

[Blair Braverman]

you know, it's more dangerous to be crossing the sea ice, probably. I don't know. I think I. I think I would struggle to say to stay at camp. Yeah, for me, it would be so much psychologically easier to be moving forward in some way and to be sort of distracted by the immediate challenges of trying to get over the snow or get over the ice. Like, I. I really struggle when I have to wait for resolution for something and I'm not able to just do something. So, Sarah, when you and I are in this situation, you stay, I go.

[Sarah Marshall]

We're increasing our, Our chances. Yeah, I think, I guess I think that my brain functions in a way that even if staying put did mean certain death, it might feel safer to me. And that's what I worry about. But also I feel like what I've read is that if you're like stranded with your vehicle these days, you should, like, probably definitely stay with it. So I would be good at that. So that's fun. That's good.

[Blair Braverman]

That is a survival skill. The Sarah crew, the crew that's staying behind on the island.

[Sarah Marshall]

The home team, if you will.

[Blair Braverman]

The home team. The home team are Ada, Gal and Mar.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm sorry, I'm giggly. This is just so scary.

[Blair Braverman]

It's okay. I know, I know. I often find myself, like, giggling nervously with stressful stories. I don't think that you're taking it lightly.

[Sarah Marshall]

Thank you.

[Blair Braverman]

Mar is the oldest with the most experience, so he's sort of looking over the camp. And Gal, remember, is the youngest, the 19 year old. And I want to say he's inexperienced, but at this point he's been living there for a year and a half, so he has actually a lot of experience. The days go by. You know, they're sort of keeping track of where they think their friends are. Oh, they're probably halfway. Halfway to the mainland at this point. They're probably getting there. And after two weeks, they're so relieved and they think, okay, they're probably on land. They've made it to Siberia. They're just starting to get hopeful. They're proud of their friends, Crawford and Knight. And the dogs just turn up right back at camp. God, their faces are literally black from frostbite. Like they've turned to leather.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, God. Yeah, I'm scared of frostbite.

[Blair Braverman]

Why?

[Sarah Marshall]

It just sounds very, very painful and also like you could lose bits of you.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

I don't know. And just the thing of, like, it seeming like it. It seems like it comes on faster than a lot of people think, or else they would have put on a scarf, I guess, you know?

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, well, you can get it through a scarf.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. See, I don't even know what to Put on. That's why I'm afraid.

[Blair Braverman]

I. It's interesting. I. I mean, I've had frostbite. I haven't had it bad enough that my skin has turned black, but I have friends who have. But I think of it as like the flip side of sunburn. H. And we don't treat sunburn necessarily as the end of the world. It's like, oh, you damaged.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh my London.

[Blair Braverman]

Okay, well, she's a doctor, so we should listen to her.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yes, that's true. And you're very fair, Sarah. You have to reapply.

[Blair Braverman]

Frostbite can be dangerous. But like skin level frostbite, I guess it takes a little longer to heal than. Than sunburn. I have a patch on my cheek that has been frostbite. And I can like gauge the temperature from how that patch on my cheek feels.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's so cool. Cool.

[Blair Braverman]

Like it always feels cold before the rest of my body. You have a magic cheek, but these guys frostbite a million times worse. Google this if you don't. If you can't picture it just like black ink, like that's how dark it gets. It turns out that this whole time they have only made it a few miles. They barely made it away from shore.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, it seems like it would be hard to stay oriented in the same direction.

[Blair Braverman]

Well, they got caught in a storm.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

And then after they got caught in the storm, Night was just too sick to keep moving and they ended up coming back in large part because of Night. He just couldn't do physically what needed to be done.

[Sarah Marshall]

Do you think that there was like a world in which they could have made it?

[Blair Braverman]

I think they could have done it. So actually the last expedition that Stefansson left on Wrangle island, they did get out this way, which is kind of where the idea comes from.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. So they actually have data showing that people who are starving and abandoned have done this before. I'm just more pessimistic than I give myself credit for, I guess.

[Blair Braverman]

I think you're a balance.

[Sarah Marshall]

Thank you.

[Blair Braverman]

Crawford at this point also is having some scurvy ish symptoms.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

And he also has pretty bad frostbite. Knight writes in his journal. This is so judgy. He writes, Crawford has several of his fingertips frozen badly and they give him considerable pain, but nothing serious.

[Sarah Marshall]

What affect his love life or anything.

[Blair Braverman]

He has the poorest hands for this country of anyone whom I have ever seen.

[Sarah Marshall]

No, don't come for a man's hands.

[Blair Braverman]

Knight's journal. Actually, he. He's a little bit sassy. I appreciate his attitude at some points in his journal.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's a situation that calls for sass. Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Now they're all right back where they started, but they're weaker and they have less food. And it's still clear that if they stay, all five of them are going to starve to death.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And I. And I, you know, I imagine this being one of those situations where the anticipation of what it's going to come to as there, you know, are. Continue to be fewer and fewer resources that people kind of, you know, inevitably have to compete over. I feel like the dread of that would be really difficult in a way. And the fear of. The fear of how you might begin to turn on each other and just

[Blair Braverman]

watching the food stores get lower with every single meal.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I don't even like to do that in my own house, honestly. I like to have a lot of food right in my sight line.

[Blair Braverman]

The group comes up with a new plan. And the plan now is that Knight, because he's. Because he's so weak from his illness, is going to stay on the island with Ada and the other three men. Goll and Moorer and Crawford are all going to take the dogs back to Siberia together.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay.

[Blair Braverman]

And the idea here is that if there's three of them, they're going to be more successful. Like, they can divide up tasks so one of them can be in charge of setting up camp, one of them can be in charge of caring for the dogs, and one of the others will be in charge of hunting. So it just. They're going to divide and conquer. It's going to be efficient. They're going to try to do it

[Sarah Marshall]

like any throuple formed under duress. They're possessing a lot of misguided optimism because it simply has to work out or else they'll die.

[Blair Braverman]

Who do you think likes this plan?

[Sarah Marshall]

No one, I cannot imagine. Crawford, I guess. Wait, no, Crawford's gonna stay. Ada likes this plan. Right. She has to hang out with her crush. Is that.

[Blair Braverman]

No, Crawford's going. Only Knight is.

[Sarah Marshall]

No, Crawford's going. No, no, no.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay. Well, I imagine Crawford might be into it.

[Blair Braverman]

Then your instincts are completely correct. Everybody hates the plan. Not one of them.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, it's a scary plan.

[Blair Braverman]

Mar thinks it's too dangerous. He doesn't want to do it. Goll wants to stay on the island and be with his buddy Ada. He's not in charge. He just has to follow orders of what the older guys tell him to do. So he's stuck going on the trip. Knight is obviously unhappy because his gums are falling off. But he also doesn't want to be alone with Ada. So he's the one she thought was trying to kill her when he was sharpening a knife. And they. They've moved past that, but they still have a little bit of wariness around each other. Ada thinks Night is loud and scary. I mean, he's more than a foot taller than her. He's just like a very big, loud guy. He thinks she's unreliable. He also is really worried there's going to be a stigma about him being alone on a. Stranded. Alone on an island with a woman. He writes in his journal. One of the things about this country is the fact that circumstances sometimes demand actions that would be reprehensible on the outside. I am sure that anyone looking at this case clearly will see that there is nothing else to be done. So he's like, people are going to judge me, but what am I going to do? I can't walk.

[Sarah Marshall]

America's sexual mores are really quite something.

[Blair Braverman]

So the three men leave with all the dogs, which also, this means that the two in camp are not going to have sled dogs, which is a pretty important part of being able to survive there.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Blair Braverman]

They promise that the moment they reach civilization, they're going to start arranging a rescue. And they, unlike Stephenson, if all else fails, will come back by dog sled if they can't get a ship. And Ada and Night and the cat are all alone.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm glad the cat's doing all right.

[Blair Braverman]

The cat's having a great time.

[Sarah Marshall]

Classic cat behavior. A cat would have a great time when everyone's dying of scurvy.

[Blair Braverman]

Ada. Ada is devastated that her best friend is now gone. Yeah, she's never kept a journal herself, but now that Gall's gone, she starts actually keeping a journal as a letter to him.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, man, I've done that.

[Blair Braverman]

And on one of the first pages, all she writes is, why Gall leave.

[Sarah Marshall]

God, I don't know. The. It's. I guess none of us can imagine the bond you would have in this circumstance because we haven't done this, but it seems like it would. It could be really powerful. And then you, you know, just not knowing what's going to happen to these people.

[Blair Braverman]

And the amount of safety and familiarity that Ada has been separated from at this point in her life, and she's finally found comfort and care for another person on this island. And now he's leaving, too.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Night is like, okay, now I'm the man here. I have to Keep things going. And he, he believes that if he can get a bear, if he can just shoot a polar bear, that will be enough fresh meat that he'll be okay. He writes in his journal, just like multiple entries in a row. Come on, bear. In big letters.

[Sarah Marshall]

I love that.

[Blair Braverman]

They're not seeing any bears. They're all gone. But his legs are swollen, he's light headed. He's trying to chop wood. And one day he just doesn't come back in. And Ada goes and finds him unconscious in the snow. Yeah, she manages to sort of help him or drag him back in and get him into his sleeping bag. And he just keeps telling her, like, ada, Ada, if I can just rest, I'll feel better. I just need to lie down and then I'll be able to go back and keep hunting and keep chopping wood. But he can't even lift his head without her sort of cradling it. He seems to really abruptly get worse. Poor Ada at this point is not just taking care of Knight, which would be a full time job, but she's also taking care of literally everything at the camp, all the work that until now it has taken five people to do. Ada by herself is chopping wood, she's hauling ice. They have these fox traps a few miles away. She's afraid to check them because she's afraid of polar bears. And she doesn't want to carry a gun to protect her from polar bears because she's afraid of guns. She knows night needs meat, she knows she needs meat and she starts checking these traps just carrying a knife so that if a polar bear attacks her, she'll fight it off with a knife. Even though the shaman had warned her about knives.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, oh God. Maybe she'll get it in the eyeball or the soft palate.

[Blair Braverman]

Keep in mind that until now they've had sled dogs who bark when polar bears are getting close. So they've always had a warning system. The dogs even had the special howl that they call the bear howl. And when they hear that howl, they're like, oh, there's a polar bear in camp. But now there's no dogs, there's no warning system. Like there could be a bear anywhere at all times. So Ada is feeling just completely terrified. She's also not finding anything in the traps. So imagine the feeling of like you've gone out, you've, you're desperate for this meat. You have braved the expanse where polar bears might attack you and you're coming over a hill and if there's a fox in the trap, it's going to save you and it's going to save your companion. But every time it's empty, she does see tracks nearby. So she starts experimenting and she starts putting snow over the traps in certain ways, just like trial and error to learn firsthand how to trap a fox. And she ends up catching one. It's skinny, but it's okay. It's meat. She's so proud, she brings it back for Knight. He can't even chew, so she has to boil it into like a broth. And he drinks the broth. And they're both hoping that'll help him. She gives night all the good parts she's just eating. Like the head.

[Sarah Marshall]

The parts that teenagers in Portland, Oregon in the 2000s would use to decorate their bikes with what, this? I don't know. Like the crust punks would put fox faces on their helmets and then bike really fast down the hill at the zoo. The point is the other parts of the fox.

[Blair Braverman]

Poor Knight. Symptoms just keep getting worse. Yeah, they do have an encyclopedia. And he, this is so relatable. Like he can't google his symptoms. He's just rereading the entry on scurvy again and again and again. And he's comparing his symptoms to the descriptions. And he actually, while this is going on, it's hard for him to write, but he can manage sometimes to sit up and write. He writes a scientific paper describing his symptoms as a case study. Basically like annotating the encyclopedia. Being like this will be useful for doctors because how often do people document their own dying of scurvy?

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, that's a good point.

[Blair Braverman]

Here's some of what he wrote. He says, oh, some of the symptoms of scurvy are scanty urine, which is not the case with me. Weak pulse. Mine seems to be okay. A very bad breath, but my breath is only as bad as decayed teeth would make it. Like reading these to me. I'm like, oh my gosh. He's trying to reassure himself the symptoms don't match, even though there's other symptoms that do. Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

He's like, I'm urinating just fine. So it's, it's not, it's something else.

[Blair Braverman]

And he's almost acting light hearted on paper. Yeah, in the encyclopedia it says the intellect for the most part, clear and distinct. And he writes perfectly. So there's another line in the encyclopedia that says old wounds which have long been healed up break out afresh. And Knight writes, not yet, man.

[Sarah Marshall]

There's like a special kind of horror to gradually Falling apart in a way that you can be aware of enough to even document, like this.

[Blair Braverman]

And then, of course, there are certain days he feels better and he gets hopeful, but overall, his progression is not promising. He's also pretty surprised and grateful about Ada's help. Like, he. He maybe didn't think she'd be up for it. So he writes that Ada is a great deal more frightened over my condition than I am. And I don't deny that it is a rather mean position in which she finds herself. But she's wonderfully cheerful and is now busy sharpening the woodsaw. She insists on doing practically everything, and I willingly permit her, for I am not able to do much.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm glad he. I'm. I'm. Again, I'm glad he said he's not able to, because for a moment, I don't know, there's just such a sweetness to him being like. And I'm. And I'm gonna let her.

[Blair Braverman]

I'll allow it.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'll allow it. Exactly.

[Blair Braverman]

In the past night's journal, he always used to keep track of, like, the temperature and animal sightings. And now he's just turning all that focus on his own symptoms. So his legs start turning blue. His. His urine does become scanty. He can't sit up without dizziness. He writes, I am hungry as a wolf, but it is all I can do to force down a few mouthfuls. If anyone has ever hankered for anything, I hanker for fresh raw meat and lots of it. Come on, bear. They just haven't seen a bear. One day, Ada's outside and she sees a polar bear in the distance.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, my God.

[Blair Braverman]

It's the first one they've seen in ages. They just haven't been around. Like, they just have to get this bear. So she immediately runs in and she's like, I don't know how to shoot. What are we gonna do? And they come up with a plan. Night knows if he gets up and goes out and waits for the polar bear to come closer, he's going to be too weak by the time it comes over. Like, he can only be up for a few seconds, as short a period of time as possible before he's going to need to fall down or faint. He makes a plan with Ada. He says, okay, you watch the bear. You stay right outside. As soon as it's within 200 yards, I'm just going to take all the energy I have and grab the rifle and come outside and aim and shoot. And then I'll probably collapse. But like Ada, maybe You can take care of the meat and we can both eat it. We can both get vitamin C. We'll be better. Ada's outside. She's watching. She's watching. This bear is taking forever. It is the slowest bear. It's not moving. Finally, it starts moving. Just really taking all the time in the world. She finally gets binoculars. She goes inside and gets binoculars, and she climbs up on the roof of the house where there's a little viewing platform, and she sees that it was never a bear at all. It was just a yellow piece of ice that was floating really slowly.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, God.

[Blair Braverman]

I mean, you think about how painful hope can be in these circumstances, too. It's not just about disappointment. It's about like. Like now they're worse off than if they'd never seen that ice chunk at all. They had all their hopes up.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Ada doesn't give up, though. She has a whole trap line now, so she's getting more foxes. Every time she gets a fox, she gives all the best parts to night. She's developing scurvy, too. She's in the much earlier phases, so she's doing better than him. But she's still getting headaches, she's getting pains. She's not physically at her best. And she's giving him all the best meat. All she eats are the head and the kidneys, man. She's always setting out water for him, and then it'll freeze over, even inside the shelter, because it's below freezing in the shelter. So she has to put, like, a cup of water and a knife next to him at all times so he can crack. Crack the shell of the ice and be able to drink the water. Knight writes in his journal in March. We're coming up on summer reading. And lying on my back, daydreaming about outside to kill time, which goes rather slowly. It's bad enough to be laid up outside where one has newspapers, good food, a comfortable, clean bed, someone to talk to. I just lay here in my dirty, hairy sleeping bag and read books again for the fourth or the fifth time. As a conversationalist, the woman is the bunk.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm thinking many things. I think it's frustrating to sort of come to this degree of extremity with another human being and to still write about them that way. But we also have this dream of suffering, refining the human spirit. And it all depends on which human spirit is going through the wringer, I guess. And also, it's like, look, who knows how I'd feel if I were dying of scurvy. In a sleeping bag. But I don't know, it feels like at that point you're just kind of being worn down to, like a nub of bare soul at that point, in a way. And.

[Blair Braverman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I'm also struck by the irony of coming to this place for adventure and ending up stuck in a sleeping bag reading, just as you did when you were a child.

[Blair Braverman]

I want to know why his sleeping bag is hairy.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Maybe he let us slide dark in there.

[Blair Braverman]

I hope so. Maybe. I bet it's the cat. I bet it's the cat.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. When I'm like, really sick, my cats are just, like, very happy because that means they get to lie down on my jugular for way more many hours.

[Blair Braverman]

That's all a cat wants. So, yeah, you know, Ada and Knight, not besties, but they are getting closer to each other. He lets her borrow his Bible, which is very precious to him, and this means a lot to her. So she starts reading it every day. That helps her a lot, even though things are very hard. And she's also writing in her journal and getting more confident with that.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm so happy people are keeping diaries.

[Blair Braverman]

So here's ada's diary from March 16. I have not feeling well for three days. First I was headache, then I had stomach trouble. And today I feel much better. I was over to the traps with no flocks or fresh tracks. And last night Knight told me I can have the Bible. He said he'd give them to me. Very nice day so far. Ada's thinking so much about other people at this point. She's thinking about Gaul. She's thinking about her son Bennett. She starts knitting gloves for Gaul and she's like, okay, when I see him, I'm going to give him these gloves. She's catching a lot of foxes and she's giving all the meat to Knight. Still, it just doesn't seem to be helping. But the things he's writing are, like, feeling a little better. My spirits have picked up wonderfully. So it's really interesting when I was going through side by side, like, Ada's diary is recording that night is getting worse, and we can read between the lines. That night is getting worse in his own diary because of his handwriting and stuff and because the entries get much shorter. So you can tell he's getting tired. But his journal is also like. It's not just a record, it's also a performance. And I think he's writing it for Stefanson, so he doesn't mention being scared. The tone is like Everything's fine.

[Sarah Marshall]

That makes me uniquely sad amid all these other sad things somehow, right.

[Blair Braverman]

Like he's just writing like my spirits are up. As he's getting sicker and sicker and sicker and his symptoms are getting to him more humiliating. Like he's going to the bathroom in his sleeping bag and aiding cleaning it up, you know, but he never, he doesn't write any of that down.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Or he'll acknowledge it a little bit, but it's always with this very, very light hearted tone. As scurvy progresses, one of the symptoms is irritability. And unfortunately this really starts to come out in night. And he starts to take it out

[Sarah Marshall]

on a what if I have scurvy, I get irritable.

[Blair Braverman]

A is doing literally everything for night. And he just starts criticizing her. He's saying she's lazy and she's stupid and she gets a fox. And he starts saying like, oh, it's not enough. You're not trying hard enough. You need more meat. As he's getting more and more irritable, more and more angry. She writes this in late April and this just breaks my heart. Man was right in everything and right to treat me mean and saying I wasn't good to him. He never stop and think how it's hard for a woman to take four man's place to woodwork and to hunt for something to eat for him and take the shit out for him. And he mentions my children and saying, no wonder your children die. You never take good care of them. He'd just tear me into pieces when he mentioned my children like that. This is the worst life I ever live in this world. Thought it's hard enough for me to woodwork and try my best in everything. And when I come home to rest, hear a man talk against me, saying all kinds of words against me when I can't get meat. He say that I wasn't trying to save him. If night happens to die, what will I do in this island all alone? He is laying in his bed since February 2nd and now it's April 21st. He looks very skinny and it's long time yet till we might see ship come. If I be known dead. I want my sister Rita to take Bennett, my son for her own son. She is the only one that I wish she'd take my son. Don't let his father blackjack take him. The next day all she writes is, I didn't go out today because I just choke with cry. May 1st she writes, if the ship comes next summer, I don't know how much I would be glad two days later. I was out to chop wood today and I saw snowbird. Oh my, how I was glad to see snowbirds come May 10th. This morning when I got up, night was nose bleeding and he asked me his can to take a dump. I think he take a shit in his sleeping bag. I think he was pretty near die this morning when I was over east of camp, I saw seven ducks flying over me going west. And I saw seagull and I saw White Owl on May 21st. This is very monumental. She doesn't talk a lot about it in her journal, but we know that it's a big, big deal. I was over to the traps today. Nothing but raven tracks. I shoot a gun one time I took empty tea T10 and shot it. That's pretty good for first time shooting.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

She hasn't wanted to be anywhere near them her whole life. And all of a sudden she's just picking up a gun and she is teaching herself to shoot without any instruction. So now she's bringing in seagulls, geese, foxes. She beefs up like a viewing platform on top of the house so she can watch for bears. They climbed up there before, but now she like really makes it into a solid platform. And she decides that this damn island needs a skin boat. It's about time. So she can hunt walrus. She's never made one before, and she doesn't know how, but she figures it out, and she just by herself builds a skin boat.

[Sarah Marshall]

Thank God. I love that this. I don't know that this man is cursing her out and she's building a bear stand. What you read was just so, so awful. And then to see her coming through that, still learning and surviving. I'm really happy about the skin boat.

[Blair Braverman]

Now she has a skinboat. She's hunting with her skinboat. No matter what she does, night keeps getting worse. He's at this point, like, the blood coming out of his nose. He's filling cans with nosebleed blood.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, God. And he probably doesn't have that much blood to spare at the moment, you know?

[Blair Braverman]

Right. Speaking of new things, she starts using the typewriter, which she has never used before. It was gall.

[Sarah Marshall]

Why did they have that type of.

[Blair Braverman]

Didn't let anyone touch it. But she's like, I'm gonna write on this typewriter. So she goes on the typewriter and she writes a letter to Gaul. It's something she's never done before. But that's not gonna stop her anymore.

[Sarah Marshall]

Nope.

[Blair Braverman]

She says just before you Left. I've told you I wouldn't write with your typewriter. So I've made up my mind. I'll write a few words in case something happened to me. Because Mr. Knight, he hardly know what he's talking about. And I guess he's going to die. He looks pretty bad. I hope I'll see you when you read letter. Well, if nothing happened to me, I'll see you. The reason why I write this important notice. I have to go out seal hunting with the rifle. That's about all I will say in this notice. I write.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, boy.

[Blair Braverman]

I don't know, I'm curious how you read that. So to me, like, she knows she might die, but she's also like, I'm shooting the damn rifle and I'm gonna write about it on the typewriter. Like people are gonna come back and they're gonna know that I did all this.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

Two days after this, June 23rd, night dies. ADA takes the typewriter and she writes a letter describing it to Stefansson, telling him the date, sort of reporting it. And she also just. She can't bear to move night's body. Like it's there, it's in the sleeping bag. So she takes the cat and she just builds herself a new shelter. At this point, Ada's going all out. She's gathering seagull eggs. The seagulls are laying their eggs, so she's able to eat those. Those are helping her. She's hunting in the boat she made all by herself. She's still reading Knight's Bible, which gives her a tremendous amount of comfort. She's. She's reading the Bible every single day and singing hymns, and she starts in her journal sort of writing prayers every day. The polar bears are coming back, so they start coming around with cubs, which means they're extra dangerous. Even though Ada's getting pretty good with a gun, she's still terrified to shoot a polar bear because if you. If you don't shoot correctly, it's just going to piss it off and it'll come attack you. So even though it would be a lot of meat, it might save her. She can't bring herself to try to shoot a bear unless she absolutely has to to save her life. Polar bears all over. She's still keeping her journal diligently, but interestingly, she doesn't mention the polar bears in her journal because she still thinks she might die and her mom might read her journal. And she doesn't want her mom to think that maybe she was eaten by

[Sarah Marshall]

a bear just Generally, or is there a particular reason for that?

[Blair Braverman]

Just that it would be a terrible thing to imagine. I think her mom's afraid of polar bears like she is, and she has an idea that, like, you could be sort of living inside a polar bear's stomach and it would be a horrible way to go.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I guess this thing of kind of writing with this expectation of your writings being found, the sort of the different outcomes you're kind of juggling in your head as you do day to day tasks is astounding to think about

[Blair Braverman]

in the spirit of documentation and trying new things. She also finds the men's camera and she teaches herself how to use it. And she starts taking self portraits. I'm gonna hold on, send you a picture. You can describe it.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay. I mean, like, that's a smile, you know, she's. I see Ada standing in full cold weather gear, like mitts and something covering her head. She's got a fur ruff around her neck, but she's smiling at the camera. And again, I can never flatter myself that I can imagine what somebody's feeling, but I'd like to think that she's feeling proud of herself for doing that.

[Blair Braverman]

Ada also knows she can't count on anyone coming to get her at any given time. So she starts preparing for another winter and she starts making a parka. And what I love about this is that it's not just a warm parka, but it's decorative. It's beautiful. So in her journal, she refers to this parka. She calls it fancy 10 different times. And she's talking about adding fancy stitching and fancy trim. To me reading this, like, it's so moving. We think of the things that people need in survival situations. And we need food and we need warmth, but we also need beauty and art and expression. And so to me, like, reading about this fancy parka she's making, reading about the beautiful trim she's sewing onto it, it tells me a. She's getting ready for another winter. And she also, even though she knows she might die, is preparing to see people again. And she wants to be stylish when she sees them. Like, think of it, this is the woman who wears like navy blue suits when she's walking around Nome with all the gold miners. She's stylish and she's gonna, like, look sharp when that rescue boat comes.

[Sarah Marshall]

She's an arctic survivor about town. Gosh darn it. Yeah. And also just, you know, joy, being a part of survival shouldn't be that radical of a concept. But we all get to remind ourselves of it as many times as we need to.

[Blair Braverman]

On July 21, she writes in her journal, I put fancy trimming on my new parki and trimming around the hood. It looks like a new parky. All right.

[Sarah Marshall]

I don't know. I love that. This is the second story that you've now told me. The first being the story of the Orelan, where a woman in an extremely dire survival situation, who knows that absolutely no one is coming to help her, starts designing fancy clothes for herself to find joy in.

[Blair Braverman]

I thought about that a lot, and I thought about how that's something that's not necessarily recognized in traditional survival narratives. Like. Yeah, a lot of biographies of survivors are not necessarily focusing on women survivors who are. Who may be making beautiful things. But that is a survival skill.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And also the act of, like, you know, if you're surviving something where you have dependence, like, having to also create a beautiful life for your kids, which is true of women's survival quite a lot. And, of course, you know, in this case, she has a child who she has to somehow try and get back to. This also reminds me that I told you recently about how much I love open water to a movie. I'm convinced I'm one of the only people who's ever watched where the only survivor is the mom with the baby. Because she's like, okay. I just. I. I simply have got to, like, dig deeper and make it. And not that it's a choice, because clearly it isn't, but. I don't know. I suspect that when you have a child to get back to and who, if you don't make it, will never know what happened to you, that there's just. I like to think that there's human resolve that comes from. That can take you further than you would have gotten otherwise.

[Blair Braverman]

It's interesting that you say that, because the very next thing she starts doing as soon as she finishes her parka, is she starts making beadwork slippers for Bennett.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, he's gonna need slippers.

[Blair Braverman]

He's gonna need slippers. And this. This isn't something she can use there at all.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Blair Braverman]

Like, it's not gonna fit her feet, but she's making them for her son. And she writes, I sew beads onto Bennett's slippers. If I should go home, he can put slippers on.

[Sarah Marshall]

I'm so happy she has beads.

[Blair Braverman]

I just. That line. That line kills me. Cause I'm just thinking about, like, her being a mom, and she's alone on this island. Every single other person has left or died. She doesn't know if she'll see her son again. But she's sitting here and she's with the cat and she's thinking about her son. And stitch by stitch, she's just making him these beautiful slippers. And all she's thinking about, what she writes down is the moment of, like, putting them onto his feet so he'll have warm feet and he can look down and he can see these beautiful slippers that, you know, show how much his mom loves him even when she was gone. Like, if I should go home, he can put slippers on. Oh, God.

[Sarah Marshall]

God. It also, it. It. I don't know, I feel like it's not too woo woo to say that maybe, you know, beadwork or any kind of, like, repetitive craft or task, you know, can become a form of prayer, I think, especially in something like that, because you're putting so much intention into what you're doing, you know, and that your hopes are kind of going into each bead.

[Blair Braverman]

Hopes and love. And she is singing psalms while she's doing this. So she's very much actively praying and thinking of her loved ones.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

On August 20th, she opens the last tin of biscuits.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, my God.

[Blair Braverman]

It is the very last bit of prepared food on the whole island. So from now on, she's going to have to hunt for every single other things she eats.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, God.

[Blair Braverman]

The next day, she hears like, this weird walrus outside and she ignores it. She's like, whatever, weird walrus. It keeps going. She's like, why is this walrus doing that? And she gets up, she puts down her slippers and she goes outside the tent and there's a ship.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, my God.

[Blair Braverman]

We know from what people on the ship have said. She runs straight into the water in all her clothes and. And the captain of the ship sees her. He thinks she's a hunter, which she is. She's wearing this parka made of reindeer and wolf fur. She's running into the water. He comes over to her and the first thing she says is, where are Crawford and Gaul and mar. Why isn't Mr. Gaul with you? The ship's captain says, aren't they here? Ada collapses. The captain catches her. He says, you're safe now. I'm going to take you home.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, this is great. But also, what happened to her friends?

[Blair Braverman]

Okay, so here's a little bit of a Postscript.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Blair Braverman]

In January 1923, which, by the way, is. Well, they were all still on the island, Stephenson announced his Retirement as an explorer. The Sunday Times in London quotes him as saying, I am through with exploring. I do not intend to ever set foot in the polar regions again.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, good.

[Blair Braverman]

He did manage to, like, pull together some money, send this ship with a captain named.

[Sarah Marshall]

Named Noyce, because he's a Noyce captain. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry.

[Blair Braverman]

Unfortunately, Stefanson is not done exploiting Ada and Noyce is going to join in. So these two men who are involved with leaving her on the island and picking her up from the island are going to get into a massive legal fight for the rights to her journal and the rights to her story,

[Sarah Marshall]

Because it couldn't possibly belong to her. Obviously.

[Blair Braverman]

Noyce actually, like, asks her on the rescue ship for her journal and she gives it to him because she trusts the guy who saved her. He immediately redacts part of it so that it's lost forever. He crosses, like, blacks out certain entries.

[Sarah Marshall]

Jesus.

[Blair Braverman]

He used these redacted parts to sell a very scandalous story about how she was actually there as a sex worker,

[Sarah Marshall]

which, first of all, and what if she was? And second of all, certainly the work of surviving and keeping everyone else alive was the main part, no matter what, but yeah, it's. Ah. Why, why, why, why go on? This is awful.

[Blair Braverman]

Stefansson ends up getting the rights to Ada's story, like, wrestling them away from Noyce. He uses them to sell his next book, which is called the Adventure of Wrangel Island.

[Sarah Marshall]

Great Gall.

[Blair Braverman]

Crawford and Mar were never heard from again. They never showed up anywhere. No one ever found them. Yeah, Vic the cat came back safely.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, thank God.

[Blair Braverman]

Became a feral cat and gnome, I presume, or just, you know, living large.

[Sarah Marshall]

Vic's doing well, Presumably. Vic's children still watch the end of the Iditarod every year.

[Blair Braverman]

Ada also gets back to Nome and she goes to Bennett. Bennett's doing well. She gives him his slippers. She brings him to Seattle for treatment and he's able to get the medical treatment he needs.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, my gosh.

[Blair Braverman]

She also ends up connecting a lot with Knight's family. So she reaches out to them, they reach out to her. She tries to return the Bible that Knight gave her. She says, this really should belong to you. And the family says, no, he gave it to you. It's yours now and it's her prized possession forever.

[Sarah Marshall]

How did things turn out for her?

[Blair Braverman]

She does relocate to Seattle with Bennett. She's with him. He's doing much better. She has another son too, named Billy. And she is, by all accounts, just an extraordinary Mother. I mean, we don't need to hear their accounts of it. We can see what an extraordinary mother she is and what lengths she went to to protect her kid during her lifetime. She didn't tell her story very much, but her family has been really fighting for her to be recognized as the hero that she was and as the survivor that she was. She deserves every bit of recognition that anyone can give her. Yeah. I think we could very roughly divide most wilderness survival stories into two categories, where one is people who put themselves into survival adjacent situations, like your standard polar explorers or someone who's climbing Mount Everest, and then they end up in an emergency and they have to get through it and it's terrible, but they made the choice to go into the wilderness knowing that something bad could happen. And the second category is people who were forced into a survival situation through circumstances like a plane crash on an island. That's not someone who chose to take a risk. They just wanted to fly home for Christmas. Ada's story is rare because it fits into both of those categories at once. She had to put herself into the wilderness in order to survive, that is, in order to keep her family together and in order to take care of her son. Which means that Wrangell island is one episode in what's ultimately the survival story of her life. I think traditionally survival stories have focused a lot on tangible skills, building fire, catching fish, and obviously these things are really important in a survival situation. But Ada's story is also a great example of how love is a survival skill, not just for the person being loved, but also for the person who's doing the loving. Ada survived a tremendous amount beyond her time on the island, and her story shows the ways that survival as a category can be much blurrier than we give it credit for. Part of the project of this podcast is to tell great stories and then explore the ideas and the blurry places that those stories introduce. I'll be releasing new episodes twice a month, and thank you so much for joining me in this one for listening. I really hope you're gonna stick around. And if you like this, please subscribe to it so I know I'm not speaking into the void. I would also be really, really grateful if you would help spread the word about it, either by leaving a nice review and or sharing it on socials or sending it to a friend who might enjoy it. I also want to say I was told rather firmly that it's important for podcasts to come in video format these days, that most people are consuming podcasts on YouTube but as I tell you these stories I'm staring at notes. I feel kind of self conscious and I think of this podcast as the kinds of stories and conversations that people are telling and having around a campfire. So I'm doing an experiment and putting the episodes on YouTube with footage of me around a campfire. Like you can come on over and hang out at the campfire with me. We're gonna call it Slow tv. I'll be posting every episode episode there too. Sources for this episode include the journals of Ada Blackjack and Lauren Knight which are available online through Dartmouth Library, the fantastic book Ada Blackjack by Jennifer Niven and the short film Ada Blackjack Rising and its Facebook page where people post updates and research on Ada's story. Original music and audio production are by Brandon Chabell. My guest was Sarah Marshall of the show youw're Wrong about and everything else. Research, writing, narration is by me. Talk to you next time.

[Sarah Marshall]

Ah, sealcocks.