Bozeman Library

Authors and Books

Donna Erickson

Donna Erickson discusses ranch life and examines its future through her connection to the landscape.

Join Missoula author, Donna Erickson as she discusses ranch life and examines its future through her connection to landscape.

“Rooted at the Edge paints a portrait of a ranching community steeped in history, conflict, and beauty. In this narrative nonfiction work, Donna Erickson explores the hilly skirt of ground at the northern boundary of Missoula, Montana, separating the town from the wilderness beyond. In the movie A River Runs Through It, opening credits scan across the 1950s town, the North Hills, and the wilderness beyond. The North Hills region represents the critical—and often highly personal—issues at play at the edge of many western towns. The urban-rural fringe is both valuable and vulnerable. Across the West, a way of life and a way of work are vanishing. Ranchland is simultaneously cherished by families for the lives they’ve made there and coveted by urban neighbors for open space. Community residents may love a place for its scenery and wildlife habitat while others wish it converted to a commercial parking lot. Complex ecological relationships can be bulldozed in a single afternoon. Rooted at the Edge conveys, in a way that statistics cannot, what’s at stake when ranches at the urban fringe are threatened.”

About Donna Erickson

Donna Erickson was raised riding horses, putting up hay, and herding cattle at Skyline Ranch, her family’s nearly 1000-acre ranch lies in the North Hills at the edge of Missoula, Montana. Donna was a professor of landscape architecture and planning at the University of Michigan for 16 years, conducting research and teaching mainly graduate students. This period deepened her understanding of the interaction between ecological processes and landscape change. She is the author of a book on open-space conservation, (MetroGreen: Connecting Open Space in North American Cities, 2006, Island Press) completed as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

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