THERE WAS WORK, actually. We cleared the ground, felling a single Oregon pine to free up space for the theoretical cabin. We leveled hillocks and pruned branches to create an entry for the lumber truck, which was due any minute. We designed a tower for the water tank and then abandoned the idea. We argued over different spots for the cabin. We feuded over how to build a gate, and then built it, but Gaucho Charley was so appalled by the result that he remade the whole thing with a pair of pliers. I made a courtesy call on the crusty old cowboy, to thank him, but instead of hot tea he offered a cold shoulder. I wanted a buddy; he wanted a patron.

Temperatures, and tempers, were rising. Team Sawyer was burning vacation time with nothing to show for it but a blank meadow. Delays, disagreements, and confusion ruled the site; my hardware-store accounts sat unused. Julito would drive into town and return hours later beaming with confidence: "Ciao, problema!" he'd call out. Whatever the problem was, he'd fixed it, solved it, or arranged it. The foundation materials were definitely coming tomorrow. The framing lumber would arrive on Friday, for sure. We'd start building any minute.

Guido at the sawmill failed to deliver boards on yet another deadline. Julito's own support beams, supposedly ready weeks ago, disappeared. The hardware stores promised me everything and delivered nothing. Julito threw his hands up. Guido at the sawmill threw his hands up. "This is the reality of a subdeveloped country," he said fatalistically, pouring me another shot of bitter tea. Julito tried yelling at him—and also pleading and begging. This produced no boards.

But Argentines know how to take a break. With summer light running from 6 A.M. to 10 P.M., it was possible to get two days of work out of one. We'd start early, at least by Argentine standards, and call it quits at two, before rousing ourselves at four or five for another three hours of work on the outhouse, or the fencing, anything but the nonexistent cabin. In the sunstruck heat of those early afternoons, I'd retreat to a hammock I'd strung between two ponderosas. Here, I'd engage in Big Picture Thinking, with a cowboy hat over my face. The boys would spend the siesta eating, drinking red wine, gossiping, sleeping hard, debating soccer, or birdwatching. With a series of squawks and whistles, Julito could summon the Patagonian parakeets, which perched in the very top branches of the pines, aloof.

My father could make such birdcalls, and I'd lie in the hammock recalling the way he'd taken us one summer from Virginia to New Hampshire to build his dream cabin in the woods. I was 16. A couple of months of building walls, laying floors, putting up paneling, and then wiring and plumbing had given us a ski house. It also gave me a bad case of resentment. I thought him a fool for wanting a cabin so far away that we would use it only once a year, at most.

So this splendid idiocy was a family tradition, which I could now repeat board for board.