West Virginia's founders had the sense to strike while the iron was hot and form the state in Solstice-Tide, then to put this Zep Tepi Benben rock at the center of the state seal (in the flag, below). Isians might like the quasi fleur-de-lis or the red bow or the red and green rhododendron foliage. We've got a farmer-frontiersman in bucksin and petaisos, and a miner/blacksmith on the other side... guns have been put down on the ground, and a red liberty cap rests on their "x". I'm partial to the state's motto, "Montani Semper Liberi," or "mountaineers are always free".

The formation of West Virginia was one of the most revolutionary acts in American history, tearing a new state from the body of the nation's founding state in the wake of old Virginia's confederate status. It's the only state born from the violent refusal of the Confederacy.  The image to the left is the statue in front of our state capital on the banks of the Kanawha River. It's entitled "Lincoln Walks at Midnight" and is supposed to reflect his sleepless nights weighing the question of whether to use extra-constitutional powers to establish the new state.  Thanks to Lincoln, West Virginia was established in the mostly Union western counties--by dictatorial fiat in the midst of civil war--and there was no going back. 

There's a bit of fey-tongue in the way we've been called, because of our history and shape, "The eastern-most western state, the western-most eastern-state, the northern-most southern state and the southern-most northern state."  (parts reach to central PA, well past central MD, and Huntington is further west than Cleveland).  Ay... once long ago, in a place that was not a place and time that was not a time....

Anyway, it's my material and spiritual home and I love this land very much. Here's a song about it that always makes me very pleasantly teary-eyed ("West Virginia, My Home").  I'm so very grateful to have a sense of belonging to a geographical place, to a wounded but living Appalachian culture.  

magna mater, mater montani
montani semper liberi