(Editor's Notes by Christina Myer - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

It’s been a travel-for-work kind of week, and I’m so lucky that, for me, it means driving in a state as beautiful as West Virginia is in late spring.

It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it, driving west a little ahead of sunset while the mountains are giving off steam in the foreground and the ones in the background are a hazy blue is just breath-taking.

In that same lighting, the grass is a brilliant green and the red roofed farmhouse in the valley stands out as though it is part of a painting. Then things on the horizon fade into subtler pinks and purples and the puffs of cloud rising from the hollows start to look just a little creepier.

I am absolutely one of those people who — even if in the car by myself — will exclaim “cows!” when I see them (horses, too), and there’s plenty of opportunity for it. Even the industrial interruptions, such as the shining lights of a natural gas processing facility tucked into the hills, take on an odd beauty in the twilight on an evening like that.

Whether I’ve got to be in the Eastern Panhandle, the Northern Panhandle, the eastern mountains, Charleston, Morgantown or somewhere in between, there are always the kinds of sights that make postcards in places where they aren’t so common.

(Yes, I do have to make some of those trips in February occasionally; and, no, the … erm … splendor is not quite the same. With the exception of the eastern mountains.)

But it’s spring now. Soon it will be summer. And then it will be FALL! There are a couple of weeks in the fall when there is a whole new level of rhapsodizing about the landscape.

And you know what? I get to travel through it. I get to experience it as often as I want. In fact most of us do.

We’re here, in this gorgeous region, free to travel it, explore it or just gaze at it.

But — you all knew this was coming — that’s the key. We’re free in this amazing place for a reason. More than 1.3 million reasons, actually.

It’s hard to know an exact number, but Statistica tried. Its graphic showing the number of military fatalities in all major wars involving the U.S. from 1775 to 2024 comes up with 1,304,705 people, in wars ranging from the American Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. That number is probably not quite right, as the longer ago the war, the less precise the numbers. For example, the graphic shows a tidy 25,000 killed in the Revolution and 20,000 killed in the War of 1812.

But you get the idea. Millions of human beings laid down their lives fighting for this country. For many of them, it was because they believed it was their duty to serve and defend this country, its Constitution, its people and what we stood for.

(I know not everyone’s experience with or reasons for joining the military was the same, and that the upcoming holiday will be difficult in different ways for different people.)

While you’ve got a three-day weekend to enjoy, it is fortunate we live in such a beautiful region for you to wander. Please do.

But at least for a moment on Monday, remember the more than 1.3 million men and women who — in one way or another — made it possible for us to get as a country to where we are today. And then try to honor them with a determination to behave in a way that makes this the kind of country worth their sacrifice.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com