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. Pathways to Ancient Shelter: A Sojourn in Langtry, Texas By Mary Locke Crofts AuthorHouse Copyright © 2015 Mary Locke Crofts All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4969-6933-0 CHAPTER 1 In the Beginning In the highlands, you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be. Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa Physical contact, mental contact, spiritual contact—all depend upon how one looks at an encounter, how one names it, what one desires from it, and with what humility one approaches it. With intention, reflection, and surrender, with body, heart, and mind, I seek to cross the threshold to the mythos (stories), ethos (character), and pathos (feeling) of this desert canyon country. November 11, 2005 Friday I am listening to music from Out of Africa. The view of the Rio Grande bottoms from the top of the cliff reminds me of the view from the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania and moves me deeply. I arrived in Langtry at dusk two nights ago. The Skiles (Jack and Wilmuth) handed over the key to the little brick house (built to be a country church) and I moved in—books mostly. I tried not to bring them, but I told Tom [my husband] that if I were being who I am and not who I'm supposed to be, I would have books with me. I have a radio but no television and no telephone. I have arranged my computer on the table so I can look straight out the front door with windows to my right and left. I am looking at Mexico, right there across the river from the old Skiles place [Guy and Vashti Skiles, Jack's parents]—a line of cliffs, black and beige, green hills above, and a desert meadow nearer with brush in many shades of green. My house sits on a narrow road that loops through Langtry off U.S. 90. Out the door I see the Border Patrol driving by. Out my left window, a train rattles down tracks paralleling the highway on the way to California. Big trucks truck along beside them. A mesquite tree filters my view of the deserted tourist court and store where the Border Patrol vehicle (white SUV with green letters) is now parked. I have already seen quite a few of them. At one big checkpoint between here and Del Rio, everyone heading west is stopped for questioning. The sun is just now breaking through the clouds at 7:30. I have been waiting for it for over an hour but only now is it showing its face. I tried to imagine Father Sun yesterday when it appeared huge and orange between the hills and the clouds. Father Sun, whose appearance you cannot assume, who is prayed up each morning by elders and welcomed by all creatures, great and small—(all creatures are small, relatively speaking!) I left the house at 6:40 a.m. with just enough light to see snakes on the road, but when one appeared, I almost did not see it. Again I went toward Guy and Vashti's rock cottage. Looking into the canyon to the right, I heard hog sounds (javelina? feral?) and saw something move in the bushes near me. What I first thought was a big raccoon turned out to be a huge porcupine standing stock-still right in the open. I moved away to my left and it moved away to its right and straight off the cliff. I looked over and saw nooks and crannies in the cliff wall that are hard to see unless something moves inside. The porcupine was beautiful—not spiny but fluffy looking and sweet. I looked over into the greater canyon with all the shelters—a dry creek bed at bottom and on top a windmill with turkey vultures perched on the vanes. One swooped over to check me out. It was much larger close up than it had looked circling high. I walked down the steep road into the canyon and around a cliff. Unsure which way to go at a fork and wary of running into a feral hog, I turned back toward home. Those wild hogs are very frightening creatures, aberrations—farm hogs grown huge with long wiry hair. On the way back home, I almost stepped on a small snake on the road—about twenty inches long, gold-green with a black head. It was as slender in diameter as a dime or a quarter or a nickel, I don't know. It sat so still I thought it might be dead, but when I tickled its tail (do snakes have tails?) with a stick, it "essed" its way across the road and quickly disappeared into the brush. Perfect camouflage. I am trying to make this about me and here and now—my body, my heart, my soul