I read recently that as of January 15, the winter snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California is only twenty percent of its normal amount.  It's a shocking statistic, really, that a mountain range whose copious snows in past times have trapped and intimidated countless people (for example, the Donner Party) is now reduced to a semblance of its once mighty self.  Even a mountain range is not invulnerable to the vagaries of natural circumstance.
     In my first summer in the Sierra (still after all these years my favorite mountain range), many decades ago, I was astonished at the amount of water that filled its lakes, tumbled down its waterfalls, and flowed through its streams.  It seemed endless.  Week after week, month after month, it remained as strong as it was when I began.  Its abundance seemed without end.
     Although next year's snowpack could be much heavier, this year's paucity should remind us that abundance is a fleeting thing.  Life overflows with abundance, yet it can also produce profound privation.  If we root ourselves in what life has to offer us and only what life has to offer us, we may eventually find that it is an insufficient tether for our needs and longings.  Not that life is not wonderful, for it is, but that life is only as powerful as it is and no more.  It's not inexhaustible.
     The good news, however, is that its author is not.