In this age of pre-fabrication, timber framers have a lot of explaining to do.

Or at least it seemed to me as I waited at the rental car counter in a North Carolina airport, chatting with the clerk and eager to be on my way to the first timber frame raising of my life.

"So, where you headed? " the clerk quizzed, mildly curious. "I'm heading east to watch a group of craftsmen raise a timber frame house in 48 hours," I told her, more for the shock value than anything else. "Is that a kit or something?" she asked, handing me the keys. "No," I said, thus expending my entire battery of knowledge about timber framing in one fell swoop. "It's an old way of building: a handcrafted house that 's assembled on the ground and then hoisted onto a base with the help of a crane."

"They can do that in 48 hours?" she asked. "Supposedly, " I said. "Well, " she drawled, laughing a little laugh that echoed my own mounting skepticism, "if you need the car for a few days longer, just call me and let me know."

A look at the map and I was off. The little town of Hillsborough lies on the banks of the Eno River in the North Carolina Piedmont, just a stone's throw from the high-tech meccas of the Research Triangle Park. Despite its illustrious neighbors (the RTP, a "triangle " bordered by NC State University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a vibrant research center), Hillsborough is still a quiet farming community—home to mill workers and tobacco farmers and horsemen with big spreads north of town.

Vern Miller grew up in this town, the son of a farmer with an abiding love of the rolling hills, ponds and stands of longleaf pine. In his mid-40s, he's a quiet, enthusiastic fellow: a former airplane mechanic and avid aviator who built houses and refurbished barns before he became a building contractor, an active dabbler with a great passion for the character of wood.

After countless hours of planning and dreaming, frequent trips in Vern 's Cessna to Christiansburg and months of work in the joinery, Vern Miller and the Jacobs were calm and quiet on the eve of their first timber frame raising. They'd worked their plans out with their hearts. The timber framers had worked theirs in oak.

God, for his part, had a plan of His own. That plan included some rain.

The red clay of North Carolina is a boon to brick makers and potters; a formidable opponent to everyone else. Ankle-deep red clay mud, with its remarkable color and stubborn consistency, is hardly the timber framer 's friend.

After nearly a week of sporadic rain in Hillsborough, day one of the raising was a mudfest. Several of the green oak timbers, weighing in around 800 pounds apiece, slid from the truck on their way up the short gravel driveway to the wooded site. The six timber framers, eager to get to work and hardly the sort who throw up their hands in the face of adversity, stalwartly fished the errant timbers from the woods and carried them to the site. It was a minor debacle that would later slow the crew 's progress.

Day one was devoted to sorting, stacking and cleaning, prep-work that makes everything run smoothly once the crane arrives and the raising begins in earnest.

To those accustomed to the relative chaos of a conventional building site, watching a timber frame crew in action is startlingly quiet. No radio, few electric tools, very little small talk and minimal rest breaks were the order of the day as the framers sorted timbers with the aid of a Bobcat and stacked them in a small driveway area east of the site.

Later on, the crew foreman and another crew member would sand the mud from the timbers and oil them with tung oil, a process much easier on the ground than it is 20 feet in the air.

By now, the 2,200-square-foot building was like an old friend to the folks from Blue Ridge. Unlike more conventional builders, who may limit their interest to their part of the process and have little curiosity in the overall project, the whole team at Blue Ridge Timberwrights actively participates in the process from design to raising. There is an equity in the division of labor, an absence of labor hierarchy that makes the crew truly a team.

The site foreman sands and oils alongside the newest member of the crew, the designer moves freely over the deck with other experienced raisers. Al and Sandy will arrive tomorrow, along with the project coordinator Pat Bohner, to see how things are going. Everyone understands the process and values it.

Late in the afternoon, the last timbers are oiled. The crane has yet to arrive. The crew seems disappointed at the long shadows and the fading sun, eager to be about the business at hand. Tomorrow is the beginning of the end.

Once it 's going, it goes fast. By noon, the crew has framed half of the house—assembling bents, directing the crane operator as he lifts them into place, climbing along the frame and securing the joints with oak pegs.

The crowd watches with an intensity usually reserved for Michael Jordan. Though the day is sunny, yesterday's mud incident has put the team behind. The owners have planned a party at 6:00 but, as the shadows grow longer, it becomes apparent that the home won't be framed in time for the pig picking. The crane operator punches out at 5:00 and is driven back to town. The caterers arrive with a keg of beer and a pit full of barbecue. The framers walk the frame long after the crane operator has headed back to town, admiring the day 's labor. The owners arrive and take a look around.

The deadline matters little as a curious and lighthearted group gathers for the festivities. The onlookers chat with the craftsmen, asking questions, walking the frame, drinking beer and eating barbecue. As it grows darker, Vern's wife Tina brings out a few electric lights to illuminate the party.

Up on the deck, where the bedroom will be, a bluegrass band jumps into a lively tune: "She 's gone, but I don't worry, " the song goes, the crowd laughing, "'cause I'm sitting on top of the world. "Champagne appears. They toast the day's work with paper cups.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's anyone who doesn't love the notion of a timber frame. On the final day, I meet an interested couple from Ohio and bring them along, a friendly pair from the bed-and-breakfast who had never heard of timber framing and yet were quite eager to drive 10 miles out of town to take a look. They mingle with the dwindling crowd, take pictures and ask questions of their own.

As the final timber is hammered into place, someone retrieves a pine bough from the woods. Placing a bough on the ridge is tradition—an emblem of hope. It 's the framer 's way of blessing the house and thanking the forest.