TIME RAN OUT, and we began a set of runs to the airport. Day by day, Team Sawyer broke up. They departed smiling, rapt by the Andes and, from the safety of the departure lounge, amused by the fiasco back on the hillside. There was not one board in place. Not even a foundation.

It took Mark Twain only a few pages to tell the story of Tom Sawyer's picket fence and the crew that assembled to paint it. I had interpreted that tale as a challenge, an invitation to let others build my house for me. Now, at the end of my designated 30 days, I looked at the barren hillside and saw I had been not Tom but one of his victims. I bought a bottle of vino tinto that day and, near midnight, drove back to my tent on the hillside, where the carpenters were snoring away; 48 hours later I was back in the U.S.

Twain would say that in attempting you get things done, that small failures do eventually add up to something. So here's the bottom line: I did get my cabin built, sort of. Just not by me or by Team Sawyer. In the end, long after I'd gone home and dried out my soul, boards from the sawmill began trickling up the hillside. The boys spent the entire summer up there and, gradually, at their own happy pace, built the floor, the walls, and the roof. Like every other yuppie, I paid someone else to take my splinters for me.

They did a shockingly good job, though. A year after the monthlong folly, I rolled up the hill again and found the trees swaying in the breeze just as I remembered, the parakeets still flitting overhead, and a beautiful cabin, standing by itself, utterly quiet. It is filled with Julito's skilled detailing and Oscar's thoughtful little adaptations of my design. The modern conveniences worked out better than expected—there's even a flush toilet leading to Amy's massive septic bunker. The price got a little out of hand, but not by too much. I don't have any furniture yet, so I ate and slept on the floor. I didn't drive a single nail, but it still felt like my refuge, the place where absolutely nothing could go wrong. Peace, at last!

There was, of course, a huge forest fire raging right then, and it barely missed my land. And a couple of months after I left, a volcano over in Chile blew up, scattering a rain of hot ash on the little building. But other than that, it all worked out perfectly.