Dariauna “Stretch” Lewis doesn’t have much free time. Between playing professional basketball overseas and training for her career after basketball, the former Omaha North High standout keeps busy.

Still, Lewis rarely misses a chance to return to North and mentor the impressionable girls with big dreams — girls who remind Lewis of herself.

“Even when I don’t feel like getting up, don’t feel like coming to the gym, I realize I was in their place, and I want to come pour into them every chance I get, so I come there,” Lewis said.

Abdullah doesn’t know how long his body can hold out. 

After a day of lifting heavy metal doors to roll out finished machinery ready for transport, bruises line his forearms. When he’s assigned to the factory’s assembly line, the work is less intense, but he’s on his feet eight hours a day and finds himself grabbing at his legs to massage away the pain. 

Underneath his shirt, a pump delivers the insulin his body needs as a Type 1 diabetic. His doctor has warned that working long hours at physically demanding jobs could worsen his health. 

From the Rockies to the Cascades to the Sierra Nevada, mountainsides across the West are sparsely covered by the snow that usually blankets the high country well into the summer.

That snowpack is like a savings account that the West draws on when the hot, dry months arrive. It moistens the landscape as it melts, lessening the risk of severe wildfire. The runoff feeds into river basins, and the swelling waterways provide power to hydroelectric dams, irrigation to farmers and drinking water to cities.