FUSION, IT TURNS OUT, is a mile or two beyond the hemlock patch we skied on our last attempt, and the next afternoon, plump with anticipation, we arrive at a frosty cul-de-sac and behold the Vail of clear-cut skiing. The 30-degree, north-facing cut sprawls luxuriantly below a high ridge before mellowing out in a natural basin. Nothing but the majestic six-foot-wide stumps of ancient trees dot the slope. The slash has either decomposed or drowned under the armpit-deep snow, and regeneration has yet to appear, leaving us with a blank, unruled page. This is it!

I can tell Roo's feeling expansive.

"Erkit," he says, using my childhood nickname and pointing downhill to a centuries-old log as big around as a sewer pipe. "You need to jump off that."

I hustle uphill and let 'er rip. My edges bite confidently into the Styrofoam snow. I arc left into the swimming-pool-size tree well of a ginormous double-overhead stump and spring into a right-hander, which sets me up perfectly for the sewer pipe. For one glorious moment, time and space and the cost of a flight-for-life visit to the nearest trauma center have no meaning. I land and shoot the gap between two rime-covered tubes, surf the whoop-de-doos below the logging road, and skim over barber chairs, leaning stobs, buckskin cigars—a virtual cornucopia of stumps!—before coasting to a stop.

"Aooooogah!" I yell to Roo. This is the experience we traveled so far to find, an experience you couldn't have anywhere else except, maybe, the terrain park. Or the backcountry. Or a fun NASTAR course. But, anyway, "Aooooogah!"

Roo and I trade runs for hours until, exhausted, we plop down for a final rest.

There's not a kiss of wind. Across the valley, 18 cuts, each a jagged tear in the canopy, catch the drowsy light of dusk. I find myself scanning for goshawks, imagining the whales, the salmon, the anything. And the realization hits, for the first time, that once the caffeine runs out, the clear-cut-skier finds himself in the middle of, well, a clear-cut, notable only for what is felled, fled, or just plain gone.

Maybe it's not such a good idea that we level everything green and growing and Hobbity, I tell Roo. Thankfully, he remains joyous and inscrutably Zen.

"Erkit," he replies, "why do you hate our freedoms?"