A Tree Farmer’s House Is Rooted in the Landscape

Keith Scott Morton first spied Orient, New York, in 1980, while sailing around the eastern tip of Long Island’s North Fork. "There were wooden boats, and sailboats, and a wharf from the 1800s," Keith recalls seeing in the town’s namesake harbor. "I thought, ‘Man, this is it—I just found heaven.’" A follow-up trip by land confirmed that, unlike the Hamptons to the south, Reagan-era consumerism had not touched this hamlet of cauliflower and oyster farms. In 1985, the New York City–based photographer began constructing a small house designed by his cousin on two acres within walking distance of the historic downtown.