Happy Place

The house was built in the 1920s, but the oak tree had been standing in its place for far longer. The Kennebunk house saw plenty of changes over the years—it was home to Edmund Muskie, former U.S. senator and Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, as well as a half-dozen other families who moved in and out of the shingle-style beauty, enjoying their summers on the hill. The oak tree stood there through it all, acting, as landscape designer Ted Carter likes to say, as a “great witness.” So when it came time to change the yard, to ease the steep slope and put in a pool, there was one thing no one wanted to touch. The oak, they decided, would stay.