The night before we were scheduled to set the utility poles - destined to be the skeleton of our future house-in the ground, I lay in bed with one of the most severe nervous stomachs I could recall (even after years of living in town). It was worse than the nights when the police prowled in our yard shining their flashlights . . . worse, even, than the time a gigantic officer showed up at the door with a warrant for my arrest (because I'd let our dog run free in a leash-law city).

Unlike my other bad moments, however, this one didn't come as a shock, but arose from several months of what suddenly seemed like false assumptions. We'd bought our 27 acres and decided to build a house on the land without much thought as to whether I was up to the job. That night, it occurred to me that I probably wasn't.

"I just don't think 1 can do it, Renee," I moaned, near tears. "There's too much I don't know. If the house ever does go up it'll probably fall down again."

"Nonsense," said my wife. "Be comforted and get some sleep now, because tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock you've got to meet Mr. Craven and the auger truck and go into the woods to set the poles."

Renee was right, of course. Mr. Craven and I did meet, we did install the pressure-treated utility poles more or less in the correct places . . . and the house we hung from them is still standing, more than a year since we moved to the woods. Our two girls love the country, the garden is an organic success and the dogs run free. Those days I spent in offices with bureaucrats are what seem unreal now . . . but everyone knows that story.

THE PLAN

Before we started on our home we visited Twin Oaks and

Ragged Mountain Farm in Virginia (and even toured Thomas Jefferson's Monticello). We did some reading, too: a couple of books on Japanese temple buildings, Your Engineered House by Rex Roberts and Ken Kern's Owner-Built Home. More than anything else, it was Ken's work-plus a lot of help from some fine friends-that put our thinking into perspective.

I began by drawing house plans for pole structures based in part on a modified chickee (a Seminole dwelling) that a friend had built near Gainesville. When I sent my sketches to Ken Kern along with my order for his book, he returned the designs with blue penciled notes and some conceptual suggestions that began to set us free. We realized that we'd been bogged down in drawings, and had made our pseudopreoccupation with them an excuse for not getting on with the real business of putting a structure together. In the end we used various of Kern's principles, as we understood them, but constructed our new home without a preconceived plan.

I still think, a year later, that the best advice to any amateur homebuilder is "Do it!" Read enough to get some principles in mind, and take a careful look at the design and function of the native structures in the countryside around you. But cut off the theorizing before it becomes an occupation in itself, or you'll never have that house.