Granted, it is still a niche market. But if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be believed — and why not? — it's a growth opportunity. The traveler in the very near future might be ready for some global-warming tourism. Vacation destinations? You could do the Maldives and watch the sea level rise before your very eyes. Or perhaps a trip to the African Sahel to experience some scary soil evaporation. Or you can do what we did and journey to Icy Bay in Alaska and just watch the world melt.

Seriously melting. A century ago, when the naturalist writer John Muir visited the region, there was no Icy Bay. It was all ice, all the way to the coast. Now? A lot more ice water. A coastal exploration three generations ago would have found an immense tidewater glacier blocking the bay, an inlet that today is 30 miles long and hundreds of feet deep and four or five or six miles wide, depending. Welcome to one of the fastest-receding glacial systems on the planet. It is geology on fast-forward. Genesis on speed dial.

Surrounding the bay, the landscape left behind by the retreating glaciers is so brand spanking new and raw that you have the impression the wolves and grizzlies show up each summer and go, whoa, bro. Wasn't this an ice field last year? The ground looks raked, lunar, but then summer after summer the successional parade of plants comes through, first with fireweed and lupine, then alders.

The soundscape: Plink. Plonk. Drip. Drop. It's like God left the water running in the bathtub. Then a terrible nerve-rattling craaaaaack, like a high-powered rifle recoil, echoing. It is the sound of the glaciers calving off chunks of ice the size of your garage into the bay.