Remember: Montani Semper Liberi By Dave Simpson Couple years ago, I was watching something on television and the state motto of West Virginia was mentioned. I grabbed a pad and pencil and jotted it down. “Montani Semper Liberi,” I wrote down. The next day, I found a scrap of oak out in my workshop, fired up my router, and carved those words into the wood. Then I painted the inset letters dark green, stained the piece of oak, and routed a nice edge on it. Two weeks later, I screwed it onto a joist above the front door of the cabin a friend and I built way up in the mountains of Southern Wyoming, where I've been spending my summers for the last four decades.