SPECIAL SKI ISSUE : CROSS THE COUNTRY : Along trails in Arizona and New England, the tranquillity and exhilaration of skiing horizontally : MAINE

When you’re looking for cross-country skiing that is more about the wisdom of nature than the frenetic genius of humanity, there simply is no place quite like the last century. So unpeopled. So televisionless. So very thin, the barrier between human life and natural life.

Warning: The roads to the 19th century are about what you’d expect--rutted and rambunctious and thick with snow--but they’re usually worth the trip. The one I chose romped deep into the White Mountains National Forest, near Bethel, Maine, twisting and plunging so admirably that the power poles stood still in amazement and declined to go further.

And where even the road lost its nerve and ceased, I found the Telemark Inn clinging to a hill, its kerosene lanterns twinkling bravely into the black night.

Built in 1900 by an imaginative and sometimes whimsical insurance magnate, the six-room inn has steadfastly resisted the siren song of electric lines and the allure of central heating. And as for the miles of wild forests and mountains and woodland beasties that surround it, they have changed not at all.

I park the car, and for the next three days do my utmost to wipe its mechanized and resource-guzzling existence from my consciousness.

January in Maine is a good time for an escape. Not having time for the Caribbean, I decided to stick closer to home, but only physically: I wanted a few days where I had nothing to do with the business of feeding myself or shoveling the driveway. I wanted to hear no news. I wanted to go to an island of the mind.

And if one must stay in Maine all winter, one must ski. I’ve been cross-country skiing since childhood, following my mother and grandmother’s carved-wood tracks on my red miniatures. It’s a wonderful way to move through the postcard scenery of winter, quickly and quietly.

There are other places to ski on groomed trails--even here in Bethel. The dignified, if boutiquey, town center, set at the foot of the White Mountains that rise into New Hampshire, sees hikers in the summer, leaf-peepers in autumn and masses of down-hill skiers in the winter. And the town’s biggest inn offers its own maze of cross-country trails. But the elegant Bethel Inn, which gazes down on the main street, is no island.

By contrast, the Telemark Inn, 15 minutes away on a good day, limits the skiers on its trails to guests plus 15 day-trippers, to keep the experience quiet. And its trails, higher in the mountains, range from undulating to downright tumultuous.

*

I am awakened from my down-feathered nest the next morning by, of all things, the grumbling of a motor. Through the old panes of our wood-paneled room, I see a blond-ponytailed cowboy kneeling on a snowmobile, disappearing into the woods at the edge of the rolling, white lawn. It’s Steve Crone, our host, heading out to groom the trails. Jason, my ski pal, and I don’t wait for him to finish. We barely wait for innkeeper Jo Faubert to stoke us with slabs of French toast. We zip on layers of 20th century fabric, clamp high-tech plastic planks to our feet and push off.

It’s warm for January, the snow is fast and we sail down the lawn, hopping frenetically at the bottom to avoid a clash with the local residents--a stalwart dynasty of pine and birch. The lower system of trails is flatter and ideal for beginners; the upper, Steve has warned, is for the moderately skilled and the adventurous. That, we nod to each other, is us.

We spend the morning up in the hills, flying. We chug up a rise, and pause in the soundless snow and sunshine. The solemn beech trees stand with their old leaves furled. A woodpecker sends a hasty telegram across the valley. This, our breathing, and the click of dry leaves in the wind, are the only sounds. And then we bend our knees, cross our fingers and barrel down the other side. There are turns that we don’t quite make. There are snowbanks that bear the imprint of our flailing bodies, like unkempt angels.

We make a wild descent toward the lodge at noon, and find ourselves face to face with a flock of llamas, as though we had arrived suddenly in Peru. They approach us politely, emitting small, burpish grunts. As we stand by the fence, they sniff our cheeks, nuzzle our eyes. A fuzzy baby attempts to eat my nose, issuing little llama bleats of wonderment.

And there are two draft horses in a separate paddock, although Steve regularly lets them out to snort and buck and feel their oats all over the homestead. The menagerie extends to a gentle pack of dogs and a cat that generally speaks only if spoken to. The horses are employed pulling sleigh-loads of guests down the snowy road on moonlit nights. The llamas earn their keep in the summer months, accompanying hikers on decadent camping trips through the mountains.

After refueling with Jo’s smoldering chili, we explore the gentler hills of the lower trail system. All 12 1/2 miles of trails are groomed very wide, so we indulge in the luxury of skate-skiing. The snow is firm and greasy, so even with our long skis, we’re able to stroke easily back and forth across the trail.

The ice-skating pond at dusk looks inviting, but our bodies lobby hard for a long dinner and a longer sprawl by the fire. A small generator murmurs sleepily outside as Jo cleans the kitchen, and as we roll into bed, it falls silent.

The next morning, Steve bangs through the kitchen door to join us for pancakes, home fries and eggs at Leon’s table. Leon Blanchard, founder of the Prudential Insurance company, loved wood, and in addition to the curious carved twigs that hold the towels and toothbrushes in our rooms, he built this marvelous table. It’s seven feet in diameter, and composed wagon-wheel-style from dozens of wedges of dark cherry.

“Who wants to go back country?” Steve says, throwing himself into a chair. Most of this group, consisting of couples and two professor pals, is pretty green. They look dubiously at each other, and back at the cowboy, who’s grinning wildly. He gets eight out of 10 of us.

Because it’s in the White Mountains, the inn’s own groomed trails link up to countless miles of ungroomed and completely unvisited trails that lace the national forest. We head up into the Back 40, but hang a left, gliding through unbroken snow along an ancient logging road. After a long, glide downhill, we find our ski tips hanging over a churning chasm of tannin-yellowed water, an unexpected obstacle of liquid river, courtesy of a January thaw.

*

By now, our fearless leader has so inspired us that we hardly hesitate. We pitch our skis across this roiling margarita and crawl over on fallen trees, or bound across on protruding rocks. We bushwhack back to the trail, and discover that a tragedy has befallen the good-natured lawyer among us: he has broken the tail off his right ski.

“Wow! I’m impressed!” Steve yelps, slapping the man on the back. Perhaps this is not a tragedy? “I like to break at least 50% of my skis each year!” The lawyer perks up, takes a few test shuffles, and signs on for whatever comes next.

What comes next is a long, gentle ramble up through a beech forest, where life, if I read the signs right, revolves around the humble beechnut. The papery hulls are everywhere, and the melt has sheared the top off innumerable mouse tunnels through the snow, revealing large stashes. Among these are the tracks of mouse-lovers: coyote and fox. Farther on, we come to a snowy little pond slung between hills and surrounded by a skirt of stumps. The banks of the pond have been clipped clean, and in the center of the unbroken whiteness rises a fine beaver house cobbled from the sticks.

We sit on a huge beech tree felled but left by the loggers, and survey the impressive damage. The beavers have chopped down everything from one inch in diameter up to to 12. But a light rain has begun to fall, and when the beavers fail to emerge with cocoa and cookies, we abandon our vigil and head back down through the woods.

The snow cover is melting fast, which the whole company takes as a grand excuse to flop around inside after dinner, rather than braving a moonlight ski, or a skate on the liquefying pond. Our collective wits temporarily coalesce around a defunct cuckoo clock on the wall, but it’s readily apparent that the only damage our wits will inflict tonight is on our pillows.

By morning, the snow is essentially gone, and the clock becomes the object of our group obsession. The lawyer confesses a proficiency with cuckoo clocks, and asks Steve for the instructions. These are in German but divine providence has placed a native speaker among us too.

“What does it say?” the lawyer asks.

The German frowns at the paper: “Unpack!” he says.

Through no fault of our own, the clock eventually comes to life, and its bird hoots and its dancers reel a dozen times as it is set. At every subsequent half hour as we read on the glassed porch or lounge by the fireplace, the bird hoots and the dancers reel and the chimes plink.

As appliances go, cuckoo clocks are pretty benign: They require no umbilical of electricity, they devour no batteries. But on the other hand, they are forever informing the world that it is this time, or half an hour later, or half an hour later still. And we know time better, more personally, than that.

We know that right now it is the hour of soft-padding foxes and nut-crunching mice. It’s a second of thaw just a moment before the freeze resumes. It’s winter in these old, New England woods.

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GUIDEBOOK: O’ Little Town of Bethel

Getting there: The closest major airport to Bethel is Portland, Maine. From LAX, United, USAir and Delta offer connecting service. Restricted advance-purchase fares start at $488 round trip.

Staying at the inn: The Telemark Inn, RFD 2, Box 800, Bethel, ME 04217; tel. (207) 836-2703. The Inn’s 360 acres border on the White Mountain wilderness area with practically unlimited back-country trails. Three-day, three-night weekends, $275; two-day, two-night weekends, $198; discounts for children. Prices are inclusive. Cross-country equipment rental, $12-$14 per day; snowshoes, $10 per day. Ski season is December through March.

--H.H.