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Nice timing, Department of the Interior.
On Thursday, that branch of the federal government reinstituted a ban on mining in the watershed that fills the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Two days later, St. Paul’s History Theatre premiered the most affectionate valentine to that part of the world you’re ever likely to encounter.
Called “The Root Beer Lady,” it’s named for Dorothy Molter, a woman who fell so deeply in love with that thickly forested stretch of watery wilderness on first visit that she soon settled on a small island there and stayed for 52 years.
Written and performed by Kim Schultz, it’s something like a memoir in monologue that chronicles how a nurse from Chicago heard the call of the loon and left civilization behind, paring her life down to essentials and cultivating a profound connection with nature. Schultz convincingly taps into Molter’s gruff, tough, no-nonsense bearing, but never allows Molter to lose touch with the wonderstruck woman she was on her first foray to the North Woods.
It’s a ceaselessly engaging chronicle of a life quite unlike any other. Under Addie Gorlin-Han’s direction, Schultz keeps the pace clipping along on this collection of campfire stories about what it took to survive in a beautiful but often unforgiving state of isolation. And she does so with plenty of humor and hard-won wisdom, such as the blizzard-battling dictum, “Keep moving, you live; stop and you freeze.”
But maybe battling is the wrong word, for one thing that “The Root Beer Lady” makes clear is something Molter learned from her Indigenous neighbors early in adulthood: That nature is best seen as a collaborator, something that requires your cooperation and respect. And that complaining about the challenges it sets before you is a fruitless endeavor.
While it is a one-woman show, Molter isn’t alone. In relaying stories, Schultz morphs into a handful of evocatively drawn characters, including Dorothy’s father and sister, her resort owner mentor Bill Berglund, an overmatched U.S. Forest Service officer, and her neighbor from a few lakes over, Benny Ambrose, the only other non-Indigenous resident allowed to live in the Boundary Waters after it became federally protected in 1964.
While it’s true that Molter lived alone on the Isle of Pines in Knife Lake for the last 38 years of her life, she was anything but lonely. The resort she inherited from Berglund continued to operate, albeit by donation, as were purchases of the homemade root beer she brewed up for itinerant paddlers. They pulled ashore at a rate of about 6,000 visitors per summer, so Molter was hardly a hermit.
Thanks to Schultz’s homespun script, welcoming characterization and elastically expressive face, you’ll likely feel like one of those visiting canoeists as she regales you with tales of dragging Berglund to a hospital by toboggan or having her life saved by a loon.
It all takes place on a convincingly cluttered Chelsea M. Warren set with a beached canoe at the stage’s edge and a fence made of broken paddles. Adding to the ambience are Katharine Horowitz’s folk-flavored score and such soothing sounds as lapping waves, hooting owls and howling wolves.
While Schultz’s Molter does give a strong sense of what winter is like up there, the overall effect is a warm slice of summer ideal for a respite from the current cold snap.
‘The Root Beer Lady’
- When: Through Feb. 19
- Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul
- Tickets: $58-$15, available at historytheatre.com
- Capsule: An engaging visit with an inspiring woman of the wilderness.
Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.
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