Love's Sacred Ground
A Travel-Inspired Story
On the North end of the Napa River along Western shore, there is an industrial park. Semi-trucks and nondescript buildings punctuate asphalt lots littered with cars. To find it, you’ll need to pass the bustling downtown, the public market and a string of luxury hotels. This is the working side of Napa; the heartbeat that sustains the wine-soaked frivolity that travelers seek.
But it wasn’t always here. Many years ago — 170 to be exact — this was a grass field that tumbled out for miles, uninterrupted save for the occasional farmhouse or saloon that dotted the land.
It was in this exact location that James Whitman asked Elizabeth Davis to be his wife. He’d been shy about it for no good reason. Elizabeth was crazy about him and fond of saying it. Still, James was unsure exactly why this vivacious woman enjoyed his stoic company, so he felt nervous asking her to keep it for the rest of their lives. Elizabeth squealed with delight when James finally mumbled the words and threw herself at his kneeling form. She was a slight woman, but she’d leapt with a force that brought them both to the ground in a spinning pile of giggles and kisses.
The wedding came together quickly. Elizabeth added lace to her best dress and coordinated a feast to follow. James took a steamboat to San Francisco to get them matching gold rings. They held the ceremony on the same place where James proposed, stood with the town’s justice of the peace, and promised to love each other no matter what came.
They kept their promises. They loved each other as the town and their family grew. They loved each other over long absences necessitated by war and work. They loved each other in the tight confines of daily life. They loved each other through changing bodies and aging minds.
At every stage they came back to their place on the river. It was the ground on which they began and it called them home whenever their promise of love needed tending. They’d sink their toes into the grass, listen to the rush of the river and remember.
They were doing just that one autumn day, after forty-six years of visits. James needed a cane to walk now, but Elizabeth just hooked her arm around his waist for support. She’d done it long before she needed to, liking the feel of his arm wrapped around her shoulders, so it didn’t injure her pride to lean on him now. For James’s part, as long as Elizabeth’s head rested on his shoulder, he was happy.
“We’ve really built something here, James,” Elizabeth said after a long, peaceful silence.
“We sure have. Something sturdy.”
“Mm.”
“Like a log cabin.”
Elizabeth threw her head back like she was nineteen again and laughed with breath James didn’t realize her aging lungs could still hold. He hadn’t heard quite that sound in years and he was pleased to realize it still made him feel as weightless as he did the first time he heard it.
“A log cabin?” Elizabeth wiped her eyes. “Surely anything I build will have more class than that.”
“That’s true,” James conceded. In the years since his mumbled proposal, James had done well enough in business to let Elizabeth’s eccentric style blend with expensive taste. Their home was vibrant but sophisticated, garnering compliments from the ladies he always found taking tea in his front room.
“What’s a better structure, then? A castle?”
“Hm. I do like the regality of all that, but castles can be so plain. Just flat stone and those appalling gargoyles.”
“A cathedral then?”
“Oh, don’t bring God into this. Let him have his own house.”
That made James chuckle. He wasn’t a man who anyone would describe as silly, but with Elizabeth he always felt like he was at play.
“I’m out of architectural references, Betty.”
“I’ll say,” Elizabeth teased, nudging James with her shoulder. “Well, it would have to be gorgeously decorated and make a statement.”
“Of course.”
“But nothing modern. We’re too old for that.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I think something classic, yet ornate. Like the Parthenon.”
It was James’s turn to laugh. He let out an uncharacteristic bark that made his wife jump.
“The Parthenon?! Our love is the Parthenon?”
“Why not? It’s stately, beautiful and has stood the test of time.”
“All good points.”
“And I think it symbolized democracy at one point. Which is a nice metaphor for our marriage. Or, come to think of it, maybe it was built for a greek goddess. I can’t remember now…”
James shook his head with a smile. “You don’t even know! You just like the way it looks.”
“Perhaps,” Elizabeth said with her own smirk.
They walked home, leaning against each other for more than just balance, teasing about their astounding lack of knowledge on the classics. They went on teasing, leaning and loving for another three years until Elizabeth fell ill. She was taken quickly by pneumonia. James cursed his bad luck that he didn’t follow just as quickly behind.
After Elizabeth died, James came to their place by the river daily. It was a ritual others thought was sweet until it became just plain sad. James didn’t care. He just wanted to feel close to Elizabeth.
Whenever he was there, he thought of all they had done and everything their love had built. He tried to chuckle at the memory of Elizabeth comparing their love to ancient Greek structures, but it just made him ache with the loss of his best friend. That ache can drive people insane. Maybe that’s what happened to James because a year after his wife’s death, he broke ground on a white stone temple on the North end of the Napa River along the Western shore.
Young men dug deep holes and poured in wet concrete to hold the bases of eight stone columns. Each one was ornately decorated with vines and deep fluting, topped with a scrolling capital. Its roof was stone also, supported by a frieze that was intricately carved with images of a couple that looked like James and Elizabeth if they’d worn togas rather than cotton twill.
Construction took nearly four years from the initial dig to the final flourish. James oversaw every detail from a wicker chair on the grass.
Once it was complete, James came to his personal Parthenon every day. Sometimes he would bring his family, a picnic or a book. Others he would just stand in silence taking in the structure. Nothing kept him from his visits, so when he didn’t show up by late afternoon on an unremarkable Wednesday, the folks in town knew he was gone.
The structure James and Elizabeth’s love built stood undisturbed for nearly two decades more. But slowly the lovely couple faded from living memory and the town’s teenagers took to using it for nefarious reasons that would have made James scowl and Elizabeth giggle. Bit by bit, it was defaced and desecrated until town officials stopped trying to salvage its sanctity. A few decades more and half the roof had fallen in and three columns toppled. A few more and only two stalwart columns still stood, rooted deep into the grass.
Napa grew and continued to absorb the wild rolling land around the river until it was mostly concrete. The downtown rose and expanded. The wooden stalls of the public market were enshrined in shining steel. River views cost so much that only conglomerates could afford them. Everything in this small pioneer town swelled until the only thing left of James and Elizabeth’s sacred space was a slim patch of grass onto which one column clung.
Yes, so much has changed in those hundred odd years. But if you’re willing to look, there are still pieces of a truly lasting love where you least expect to find them.
Travel is one of my great loves. One reason is that I am constantly inspired. I find myself wondering at the lives of people I see or the backstory of the places I go. My imagination runs wild and I end up scribbling little vignettes into one of the notebooks I always carry.
I found the seed of this travel-inspired story while on a run along the Napa River in early August. It took me about 10 miles to find this grittier side of the picturesque city and I grimaced at the change of scene. But then I saw a bank of pink, flowering bushes and decided to follow them; a beautiful beacon amidst the concrete and steel. That’s when I happened upon this column base. It was so deliciously out of place, I stopped mid-stride to take a video and photo of it. These small peculiarities are one of my absolute favorite things in life. For the next four miles I wondered at the column’s story. I knew, almost instantly, that it was from a bygone era, but it took me a little while to find James and Elizabeth. I hope you enjoyed meeting them as much as I enjoyed writing them.
