Pathways to Ancient Shelter: A Sojourn in Langtry, Texas

When the myths and stories of a certain place intersect with those of a particular person, a reciprocity of giving and receiving results. After decades of yearning for a return to the beloved west Texas of her youth, Mary Locke Crofts experienced such an encounter when she went to the borderland of Langtry, Texas, to write a dissertation about ancient pictographs. Working from a rented country house near the Rio Grande, Crofts entered in imagination the lives and stories of hunter-gatherers who painted on the canyon walls and in so doing became deeply aware of her own resonances and responses to this mysterious and sacred place. This book bears witness to her journey.

Mary Locke Crofts grew up in the west Texas town of Big Spring. After college at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, she traveled, married, and settled in San Antonio with her husband and two children. Yet she still yearned for the open skies and wide horizons she had left.

After several years teaching English, she became a storyteller, focusing on Texas history, legends, and characters, influenced by the works of J. Frank Dobie. Her interest in the power of narrative and in the archetypal patterns described by Carl Jung led her to the graduate program in myth and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California.

Work on her doctoral dissertation brought her back to west Texas to study ancient rock art in canyon shelters near the sparsely populated Langtry. Her struggle to interpret this work mythologically led to a realization that the truest way to write about it was deeply personal. In this book, she describes her intimate responses to the desert landscape and its people.

She now lives in San Antonio and Langtry.