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A Cape Cod Notebook can be heard every Tuesday morning at 8:45am and afternoon at 5:45pm.It's commentary on the unique people, wildlife, and environment of our coastal region.A Cape Cod Notebook commentators include:Robert Finch, a nature writer living in Wellfleet who created, 'A Cape Cod Notebook.' It won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.

Before the Walls Go On, the Framing Speaks: "Look"

Robert Finch
The shed as it becomes a little less an idea, and a little more of a reality.

All through the long, warm days of October and November and into the darker slim afternoons of December, I made slow but steady progress on building my shed. I screwed down the floor boards, framed the walls, spiked the braces, set the rafters, and shortly before Christmas the shed was completely framed, but not yet sheathed.

Then late one afternoon, as I set about gathering up my tools, I suddenly stopped, standing in the center of the structure. It was a déjà vu moment, reminding me of when I was a young carpenter on a local crew. I always felt that this was the best stage of any building, when it was framed but unenclosed, like the full flowering of an idea before it is actually put to use. Once the siding and roof boards go on, a structure becomes somehow diminished, smaller, its true identity hidden.

This is part 2 of a 2-part essay. You can hear part 1 here.

At that moment I stood in the center of a matrix of open beams and rafters that not only framed the structure but also the landscape outside it. The rafters became a series of skylights, each one filled with the rich green-going-to-yellow canopy of the great oak that arched above it. Each open wall became a floor-to-ceiling mural that contained its own idea of the landscape outside it. It was remarkable; just by putting a series of spare wooden frames around each of these views had made me stop and see them, as if for the first time. Just as stories say "Listen," so frames say "Look."

Another thing I learned, or remembered, in building this shed was that not only does the physical shape of a structure change as one frames it, but so can its intended function. I had started this project as a storage shed, something to hold all the seasonal stuff that had cluttered up my shop. Then one Sunday afternoon, when I had just about completed framing the shed, my neighbor Katherine came by. She admired my handwork and asked me what I was going to put in it. I replied that I was intending to use it to hold seasonal equipment, “You know, window screens, garden tools, snow shovels, herb pots, fertilizer, lawnmowers, hoses, lawn furniture,” and so on.

She looked at the shed, and then at me, and said, “You’re really going to put lawnmowers in that lovely building? Too bad – it would make such a nice study.”  And all of a sudden I saw it as such: Why yes, I thought, I could place a small desk on one side that would look through a small window out onto the garden, maybe build a few book shelves, construct a small sleeping loft… Oh, I might have to put screening under the floor boards, then insulate the walls, then, I suppose, install electricity…

But no, I thought, it’s lawnmowers. It’s usually best not to second guess your original intentions. Still, it was nice to know that even a good ways into it, any enterprise, whether a shed or a life, can take a new direction from something as simple as a friend’s suggestion.

Robert Finch is a nature writer living in Wellfleet. 'A Cape Cod Notebook' won the 2006 New England Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Writing.