When I tell people that I teach a summer course on the politics of Yellowstone, I always brace myself for the next question. “What politics can there be in a national park?” Plenty, as it turns out.

At Glacier National Park, exactly when in summer the Going-to-the-Sun Road will be open end-to-end is hard to predict, due to the heavy snows that fall along the Continental Divide there. In Yellowstone National Park, a schedule determines when the road over Sylvan Pass will open, and park crews try to adhere to it with artillery rounds.

Fewer rangers for search-and-rescue missions, closed campgrounds, and possibly more devastating forest fires are facing the National Park Service as a result of the looming budget fiasco, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said Monday.

Webcams provide us with windows on the world. They allow armchair travelers to follow activity outside a Dublin pub, monitor traffic on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, and check on what’s happening at the International Space Station. Webcams also provide windows on nature, some of the best of which comes by way of cameras stationed in our national parks.