And the specific circumstances mattered: the three men who walked onto the ice in January made a decision that proved fatal. Ada did not make that decision — because she could not, because she would not, because she had Knight to care for. She remained on the island when they left, which is the specific thing that made the specific difference. If she had been among the three who walked toward Siberia, she would have died with them. The choice that saved her life was, in a significant respect, not her choice: she was left on the island with a dying man while the others walked away. She made what she could of the situation she was in.
That is the answer. She was there for ordinary reasons. She survived through extraordinary means. She came home to her son. The expedition that organized itself around colonial ambition and was sustained by inadequate planning is remembered, now, primarily for the woman it sent who outlasted it.
## The Document That Speaks in Her Own Words
What Ada Blackjack left behind — in the archive, in the biography, in the record — is unusual in the history of Arctic exploration in one specific way: she wrote it herself.
The expedition records held at Dartmouth include the diaries of the men, the correspondence of Stefansson’s organization, the photographs, and Ada’s own diary. The men’s diaries are better-preserved and more complete; Noice’s censorship and removal of pages left gaps in both Knight’s record and Ada’s. But what remains of Ada’s diary is, in those portions, her words, her spelling, her observations, her record of what she saw and did and felt and feared and hoped.