## The Boat That Washed Away and the Boat She Built Again
One of the most remarkable individual details of Ada Blackjack’s time on Wrangel Island is the boat she built.
After Knight’s death in June 1923, with no certainty about when or whether a rescue ship would arrive, Ada was managing the practical dimensions of her survival: food, shelter, warmth, the management of the bears that moved through the island. She also began a project that speaks to a specific kind of forward-thinking: she decided to build a skin boat, a small vessel that could be used for hunting on the water.
A skin boat — a kayak or umiak in the traditions of various Arctic peoples — is constructed by stretching animal hides over a frame of wood or bone, creating a watercraft that is lightweight and flexible. Ada’s version of this construction used what was available on Wrangel Island: driftwood for the frame and animal skins for the covering.
She completed the boat.
A storm washed it away.
She built another one.
The second boat was made from driftwood and canvas — a more available material than additional skins — and it held. The building of a second boat after the first was destroyed is the specific detail that the word “resilience” is often used to describe but that is better understood as something more practical: she needed the boat, the boat was gone, so she built another one.
The capacity to respond to setback with renewed effort, rather than with defeat, is the characteristic that runs through the entire account of Ada’s time on the island. The storm that took the first boat was not a unique event; the months she spent on Wrangel Island were full of setbacks, of difficulties that exceeded what she could have planned for, of conditions that required constant adjustment. She kept adjusting.