Alaska is at the top of many a cruise wish list — but how many lines can truly get you up close to the state’s natural wonders?

Someday you’re going to go to Alaska. You can say you hate the cold, but you’ll still go. There are puffins, whales, otters, bears, glaciers, and fjords in many places around the world, but eventually you’ll give in, because only Alaska feels like Alaska: vast, empty, disconnected, and, as you start to realize during your 10th hour in the air to Anchorage, farther away than you’d imagined. It’s the end of the line, and not in a Key West kind of way.

“Alaska isn’t a reserve. It’s wild,” I was told by Chris Srigley, the leader of the expedition team aboard my Seabourn Sojourn cruise last July. “Wild” is not quite the same as the pure, still majesty of Antarctica, which fills you with peace. Wild is a charge in the air. It’s the dark, ominous, infinite evergreens. It’s watching everything trying to eat everything else while keeping a respectful distance from the things that want to eat you. It’s the nagging thought in the back of your mind that the most powerful earthquake recorded in America — an incomprehensible 9.2 — occurred where you’re standing. The ground in Anchorage shook for four and a half minutes.