MENU
Molly's a young woman working an oil internship in the Rocky Mountains. For the past 6 weeks she's been monitoring the errosion on pipelines buried beneath feet of snow. Every morning at dawn her and her teammate, Jake, ride out miles into the woods to do their tests. But today the trip is a little different. Jake has to pick up the gun he's been hiding in the forest, and he's got to be back in time to make his flight for a tropical vacation.
Despite the hassle and pressure this puts Molly under, she goes along with it. Jake's been her only friend this whole time. It's the least she could do for him, she thinks at least. After picking up the gun they race down the route for their first stop, but Molly hits a rut. Her snowmobile crashes. She's unhurt, but the snowmobile is stuck. It could take hours to remove it. Jake doesn't hold back his frustration.
They Make a plan. She'll go on ahead on his snowmobile and pretend as if nothing has gone wrong to basecamp. He'll spend the rest of the day digging out the machine. It's against every rule in the book, but she's the one that got them in the mess, and he has a plane to catch. So she goes along with it.
At the end of the route she finds a peculiar set of tracks. Human tracks, 50 miles from the nearest town, and on a route only her and Jake are supposed to use. She follows the trail. It leads to a dug out ammo crate filled with bullets, zip ties, and pictures. She rushes back as fast as she can trying to hail Jake on her broken radio. Only to find the place empty. That's when the first shot takes out her snowmobile.
My younger sister, Molly, worked an internship for several years on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. She and a partner would drive pickup trucks some 80 miles (a day) down treacherous four-wheel-drive roads to inspect corrosion on pipelines and in pump-stations, tens of miles away from temporary work-camps that were hundreds or sometimes thousands of miles away from civilization.
She was the only woman at those camps. She dealt with a variety of treatment by the men up there; ignored by some, coddled and put on pedestals by others, and subtly propositioned or leered at by others still. She’d overhear pornography through the thinwalls of their temporary housing… a detail that really stuck out to me. How would that exact circumstance play differently to her, a woman, than to me or other men? All these interactions, though not overt, still lended themselves to a constant “othering,” a subtle reinforcement by the men around her that “maybe you don’t belong.”
Yet, Molly stayed. Molly still works remote oil jobs. Molly is the most avid, accomplished, and devoted outdoorsman I know. Despite CONSTANT othering and discouragement, Molly is fanatically devoted and in love with the outdoors. With this movie, I set out to explore and depict how and why.Because it’s hard to exist in certain spaces. Some of these difficulties are inherent: extreme cold, lack of food, and deep snow. Others are manufactured.
The social challenges to Molly’s sense of belonging make up the entire conflict and plotof the film. Toxic personalities at the camp, condescension and manipulation by her trusted partner, and finally the dogged attempts of her pursuer, are each attempts topush her away and undermine her sense of belonging. Molly has a limited struggle with nature, itself, in this film. The dangerous elements are there, but she is adept and devoted to living with and overcoming them. Her relationship with nature is one of reverence, often difficult, often terrifying, often undermined by men but… one she fights for, every step of the way.
In moments alone, free of threat, Molly finds peace in the staggering vastness of nature. She pauses in the midst of her struggles and finds purpose and energy from the natural world. It isn’t merely a backdrop, it is the reason she’s out there, and what she fights hard through the film to retain a relationship with. Her victory, far beyond mere survival, is retaining and strengthening her love of place.
It is hard to exist in certain spaces. Yet Molly, like so many, doggedly hangs on to those spaces and thrives. I wrote this script to explore that resilience as a strength I myself may never have. Despite everything, despite still being ostracized, my sister, the real Molly still works and thrives in the outdoors. She’s fanatical, addicted, resilient, brilliant, and the toughest person I’ve ever known. I don’t think getting shot at would stop her.
