The Pine Forest

Every great property has a dream behind it. For the west side of Millerville, that dream was a pine forest.

In 2002, David and Judy set out to make it happen. On a day that apparently had other ideas, the two of them planted 100 pine saplings in a driving rainstorm — a story that deserves its own telling someday. It was the kind of stubborn, optimistic effort that defines everything Millerville was built on: one hundred trees, two determined people, and a shared vision for what the property could become.

Nature, however, had other plans.

The deer and groundhogs of the surrounding area showed little appreciation for the gesture. Year by year, the sapling count dwindled — nibbled, trampled, and reclaimed by the wildlife that had called this land home long before the Millers arrived. By 2009, after seven years of hope and steady attrition, exactly one of the original hundred trees remained standing.

One.

But Millerville doesn’t quit easily. In 2010, fifty six-foot trees were planted — a more serious investment, and a considerably harder target for the local wildlife. Encouraged by their survival, another forty trees followed the very next year. The west side of the property began to look, at last, like the pine forest it was always meant to be.

In 2013, five of those trees were carefully relocated to make room for the Rockcliffe, their new positions a small but worthy compromise between a forest dream and a growing property.

The original hundred saplings are long gone, but the dream they represented never was. What started as a rainstorm planting of a hundred hopeful trees — and was nearly undone entirely by hungry wildlife — ultimately gave rise to the pine forest that stands on the west side of Millerville today. Sometimes the best things take a decade, a rainstorm, and a healthy sense of humor to get right.