YOU CAN BUY BOOKS on the tribulations and techniques of building a cabin, the benefits of feng shui, and the sublime pleasures of Norwegian framing techniques. I checked one on basic framing out of the New York Public Library, bought some graph paper, and headed south.

This kind of overconfidence is occasionally useful. Since I had helped build a house once before—sort of, partly, briefly, a long time ago—I figured I was qualified. In Argentina, I hired a local carpenter named Flaco ("Skinny"), who outlined glorious plans and then quit a few weeks before the start; he'd met a woman in Chile and simultaneously discovered I wasn't Ted Turner. His replacement was a disturbingly young carpenter called Julito ("Little Julio"). He'd never actually built a house before, but Julito looked over my amateurish sketches for a 500-square-foot one-room cabin with a shed roof. "Fast and easy to build," he assured me. He told me that it could be framed up in 30 days of hard work. He promised to bring the tools, the expertise, and extra hands. We shook on it.

I'd be bringing my own "toolbox" to the site—a band of volunteers who'd cleared two weeks of vacation and paid their own way to Patagonia for some romantic labor. Along with my wife came her twin sister, Amy, who'd built refugee camps for Doctors Without Borders. Even better, her husband, Simon, was a civil engineer and former house builder. My side of the aisle contained more enthusiasts than engineers: my sister, Deebie, and a friend from Buenos Aires, Colin. These were the people I cruelly (and secretly) referred to as Team Sawyer, since they would paint my picket fence for me. Meanwhile I expected to engage in more executive-level pursuits, like Tom himself—supervising, translating, doodling on graph paper. There was no architect, of course, or even a genuine blueprint. We would buy everything locally and use what architects call "vernacular" methods. I called it Taoist non-planning and actually thought it would work.

Three Argentines, all named Charley, agreed to give me advice, if not labor. The first was the owner of Casa Verde ("Green House"), a local hostel where Team Sawyer and I would all be sleeping, so I called him Green Charley. Then there was the farmer who'd sold me the lot; he was Welsh Charley, after his heritage. Gaucho Charley was a sinewy little cowboy in his sixties who ran cattle on the hillside and had the hard-won insights gained by actually living there.

I had spent ten years dreaming, three years shopping for land, and now almost two years arranging the construction, which I planned to spend 30 days supervising. Months before the planned January 2007 start, I flew down for ten days to line up a sawmill, open accounts at hardware stores, and coordinate a tight schedule of just-in-time deliveries. Julito vowed to have the site prepped and the foundation built before I returned with Team Sawyer in January, the height of Patagonian summer. We would go straight to the barn-raising scene in Witness where Harrison Ford is clambering all over the roof beams.

Cut to reality. In January, Beth and I found the site green and lovely—and completely undisturbed. Not a single board, beam, nail, tile, or bolt had arrived, not a clod of dirt had been moved, and Julito and his crew were nowhere to be found—and wouldn't show up until a week later. Team Sawyer drifted in over the next few days. At sunset every night, we marveled at Trevelín's view of the Andes and toasted the coming endeavor. Mornings, we stood around the grassy clearing scuffing our heels. Right away an argument broke out over where to put the hot tub.