A Douglas County statute prohibits bypassing a man-made barrier designed to prevent skiers from leaving the resort, but “We are not saying anyone who goes out into the back-country is in violation of the law,” said Douglas County Sheriff’s Sgt. Tom Mezzetta, clarifying matters for The Associated Press this week. “If they don’t intentionally bypass a man-made barrier, then they are not in violation.”

U.S. Forest Service officials appear to be taking an even more laissez faire attitude. “We do not consider it a crime to leave the permit area,” Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said Monday. “It goes against our grain to close the national forests. Our guiding principle is that national forests are public lands and we should not restrict access to the public’s lands. If someone wants to leave the ski area boundary and ski into the back country, that’s their prerogative as a citizen. We do not consider it a crime.

“It’s still a risk,” Mr. Mathes went on, warming to his subject. “You’re on your own. Some people like that. But if people aren’t prepared, it could be the last mistake they make.”

Pardon me if I seem a bit breathless. Yes, Sgt. Mezzetta cavils that the federals can only afford to take such a high-handed attitude because they don’t have to foot the bill for the resulting search-and rescue operations. Nonetheless, Forest Service spokesman Mathes’ remarks are as refreshing as one of those frosty forest fairylands they’re always showing in the breath mint commercials.

Did he actually say “Our guiding principle is that national forests are public lands and we should not restrict access to the public’s lands”?

Many in the West have prayed for this day, of course. But are we really to believe the Forest Service and other federal land management agencies will now stop excavating huge pits -- or placing enormous boulders between concrete stanchions -- to block access to roads and trails which the public has been using for a century and more to access the back country in Nevada and elsewhere in the West? That they will no longer set arbitrarily high “production” requirements in order to stop citizens from operating legitimate part-time placer mining claims in Northern California?

Some years back, when a funding dispute between Congress and the White House led to a pro forma “shutdown” of the federal government, I’ve always insisted the default setting should have been to throw open the gates to all the federal reserves and impoundments (excepting, perhaps, the nuclear weapons storage silos) and announce, “We can no longer afford to pay rangers to patrol these areas; good luck folks, you’re on your own.” (Were the gates and fences there when John Wesley Powell came through, after all?)

Instead, uniformed federal troopers -- did they really work without pay, that week? -- wrote trespassing tickets to any citizen found “trespassing” on their own federal lands in the Lake Mead Recreation Area.

Is spokesman Mathes really authorized to guarantee us the default setting is now changed? That instead of ticketing hunters for pulling their vehicles a few feet off the track to glass an area for game -- contending this constitutes “unauthorized off-road travel” -- our western federal land managers now take the attitude that “We should not restrict access to the public’s lands; if someone wants to (enter) the back country, that’s their prerogative as a citizen”?

No more “permission slips” required? No more ban on perfectly safe target shooting in the uninhabited box canyons off Lee Canyon Road? No more court citations for “unauthorized camping” if a tired hiker caught out at twilight unrolls a sleeping bag and waits for dawn beside the trail in the Red Rock Conservation Area? The default setting will no longer be, “Everything’s illegal except in this little fenced-off pen unless you come beg us for a permission slip in advance and pay, pay, pay?”

It would be a wonderful day if all this were true, postponing the time when Nevada’s attorney general will have to go to court and point out the federal government has no right to these lands at all, never having “purchased” them “by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be” -- the only method of federal land acquisition within the several states which is authorized under Article I, Section 8.

It would be a wonderful day. If only it were true.