I took empty tea tin and shot it I shot right in it, thats pretty good for first time shooting.”

A woman alone on an Arctic island, teaching herself to shoot into a tin can, noting the achievement in her diary.

She was practicing for the geese.

The geese were practicing for the seals.

The seals would sustain her until the ship came.

Her ancestors had worked out this logic across thousands of years on the Arctic coast.

Ada Blackjack worked it out in months on a frozen island, alone, with a sick man to care for and a cat and the moccasins she was sewing for the child she had promised herself she would return to.

She did return.