Writer-illustrator Betsy James, in conversation with older readers.

I watched a charcoal garter snake with two brown stripes navigate the puddles of a rain-soaked road. Sometimes it crawled, sometimes it swam, fluid either way. I understood why Puebloan water deities—Kolowisi, Avanyu—are serpents.

It lay still while I stroked it with a grass stem, then slipped away.

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