Tornadoes are commonplace in the Midwest, routinely showing up in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and eastern Wyoming and Colorado. When one touched down in Voyageurs National Park earlier this month, though, it raised the question of whether a change in extreme weather events is coming to the northern Minnesota park.

I've long been a paddler, but primarily of canoes and occasionally rafts. While I have a few times gotten into a sea kayak and paddled away from shore, I never fully embraced the sport. Until now. Having placed an order for a sea kayak worthy of big lakes and ocean waters, while awaiting delivery I naturally turned my attention to where in the National Park System this new hobby would fit. And the results were fairly breathtaking in the parkscapes they entailed.

Beavers are incredible dam builders. And those dams can affect other species in "the neighborhood." They can increase the size of a lake or, if they fail, quickly drain a lake. At Voyageurs National Park, biologists want to know how the failure in 2001 of a beaver dam at the outlet of Shoepack Lake impacted the resident population of muskellunge, better known to most as "muskies."

Sinking morale among the National Park Service ranks and accumulating human waste and garbage are just some of the symptoms of the ongoing government shutdown that has left many national parks open but without adequate staffing. Not so visible are the impacts being suffered in long-term environmental monitoring, work on visitor management plans and environmental impact statements, and even potential setbacks to the hiring of next summer's seasonal rangers.