About the Book
Rooted at the Edge paints a portrait of a ranching community in a threatened landscape steeped in history, conflict, and beauty. In this narrative nonfiction work, Donna L. Erickson explores the hilly skirt of ground at the northern boundary of Missoula, Montana, separating the town from 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 rural lifestyles are increasingly compromised by suburbanization, economic hardship, and family dynamics; a way of life and a way of work are vanishing. Ranchland may be simultaneously cherished by a family for the life its members have 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. And the threats of climate change and shifting populations compromise the edge even more.
In the tension between love and loss, Erickson wrote this story of a landscape’s soft contours, piney ridges, shady draws, and grassy slopes, and its potential disappearance under an expanding city. Rooted at the Edge conveys, in a way that statistics cannot, what’s at stake when ranches at the urban fringe are threatened.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part 1. Three Ranches on the Edge
1. Geology Rocks
2. The Lone Pine
3. Deeded Land: Hold on Tight
4. You Can’t Eat the Scenery
5. Land Rich, Cash Poor
Part 2. Stories from the Edge
6. I Pledge My Head to Clearer Thinking
7. Raised by the Land
8. All Livestock Sold as Is
9. Water Runs Downhill
10. Boxcar Blues
11. A Ranch’s Rusty Jumble
Part 3. Forces of Change at the Edge
12. Force Times Distance
13. Fire Roars Uphill
14. Shoot, Shovel, and Shut Up
15. The View from Here
16. Death and Taxes
Part 4. Renewal at the Edge
17. Gravity Wins
18. Bluebird Days
Epilogue
About the Author :
Donna L. Erickson is a consultant on open-space conservation in the Rocky Mountain West and was an associate professor of landscape architecture and planning at the University of Michigan for sixteen years. Erickson has published extensively in design, planning, and conservation journals and is the author of MetroGreen: Connecting Open Space in North American Cities.
Review :
"A very thoughtful reflection on today's West."-Stuart Rosebrook, True West Magazine “Donna Erickson’s elegant and gripping account of her family’s experiences ranching on the edge of Missoula . . . has provided a new layer of understanding to the challenges now facing Missoula and countless other western towns and cities. . . . There is nothing easy about the lives of the families Erickson writes about, but it’s the irrepressible sense of possibility running through her account of those lives that will help us work our way toward solutions to the challenges now facing our communities.”-Daniel Kemmis, former Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives and former mayor of Missoula and author of This Sovereign Land: A New Vision for Governing the West “Part loving memorial of Donna Erickson’s girlhood on Montana’s Skyline Ranch, part warning of damages to the land through the forces of development, Rooted at the Edge concludes with a feather of hope for western Montana’s landscape. Beautifully detailed and evocative.”-Mary Clearman Blew, author of Think of Horses “Rich, multilayered, meticulously researched, and lovingly portrayed, Rooted at the Edge is essential reading for mending fences and opening hearts. With her deep roots in the Skyline Ranch and a career in open-space planning, Donna Erickson lifts the blinders that stereotype ranchers and environmentalists. Ultimately, she offers the promise of a new way forward for conservation, like the return of the mountain bluebird-her favorite bird.”-Marina Richie, author of Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher, winner of the 2024 John Burroughs Medal “In Rooted at the Edge, Donna Erickson beautifully portrays the rich history of three generations of her family’s life on the Skyline Ranch, one of three ranches perched in the North Hills overlooking Missoula, Montana. In clear, crisp prose, Erickson explores the intertwining of family, land, and community among these twenty-first-century ranchers. Whether she is writing about riding fence, haying, moving cattle, showing 4-H calves, or working in the family cafÉ at the stockyard, Erickson tells an important story of how a family’s grit and ingenuity assure survival on the ranch overlooking a burgeoning town. A wonderful addition to Montana literature!”-Caroline Patterson, author of The Stone Sister, winner of a 2022 High Plains Book Award “Like the Lone Pine of Skyline Ranch, standing sentinel over the author’s childhood home of Missoula, Montana, Rooted at the Edge draws us together to consider what truly matters as our communities face dramatic changes. The author’s pen is on the pulse of life in this mountain valley as it adjusts to changes in technology, demography, and climate. Donna Erickson weaves a soulful web through the decades, then leads us to the edge for a glimpse into the future. So vivid and well-written, even the history of the Missoula stockyards is an engaging read.”-Sally Thompson, author of Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World “Rooted at the Edge is the story of a woman of the American West who learned to read landscapes on the back of a horse. In a clear, authentic voice, Donna Erickson herds words with the same acumen and determination she developed moving sheep and cattle in her youth, drawing on her experience of her Montana home to tell a universal tale about attachment to place. She inspires us to think about the future of our surroundings with empathy and common sense, and to see how land creates belonging.”-Frederick Steiner, dean of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania and author of The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning “If you have lived in Montana, you won’t be surprised: this ranch child’s memoir is smart, succinct, and honest. It is also a fine addition to Montana literature. In style and content, this is a model of personal history. A memoir depends not on what was, on what has changed, or on nostalgia but on style: how sensitive and intelligent is the speaker? We need a well-spoken guide through this forest of the ‘was’ that no longer is. A voice we can trust, as well as events worth remembering. In every page, this is a voice I trust and respect.”-William Bevis, author of Ten Tough Trips: Montana Writers and the West
