TRAVEL: Where Mother Nature, Fiber-Optic Light, and Deep Dark Night Make an Awe-Inspiring Sight

Not often, but sometimes humankind can enhance the work of creation, like at a 17-acre “Sensorio” field of light installation near Paso Robles, Calif.

The Sensorio installation covering 17 acres with more than 100,000 LED lights connected by fiber-optic cable.

To see the sheer rock faces and falls of Yosemite National Park, the Northern Lights from Wisconsin’s lake shore, the Swiss Alps surrounding Lake Como, or the Milky Way unadulterated by ambient light — you realize nothing surpasses the raw majesty of creation. Yes, humankind has made some of its own marvels — from Peru’s Machu Picchu royal Incan retreat to the Webb Space Telescope giving us witness to the far reaches of the universe.

Oh my.

Yet, sometimes humans and nature consort. Human invention does something to take us beyond nature, such as transforming a weedy brown hillside into a spectacle of colored light.

That’s exactly what you take in at a must-see outdoor art installation called “Sensorio“ just six miles from Paso Robles, a small gem-of-a-town in the wine country of California’s Central Coast. (Another post for another time.) My words do it little justice. It must be seen. I’ll allow my photos to speak to the experience the Beloved1 and I enjoyed when we recently visited the place.

The installation — think massive outdoor art gallery — sits on 40 acres of undulating landscape that unfurl westward to the Pacific and a magnificent sunset, which would be reason enough to visit the place.

“Sensorio” is the work of “light artist” Bruce Munro, a 64-year-old Brit by birth who’s been creating immersive “Fields of Light” in the UK, Australia, America, and other places. His environmental works are similar in scope and concept to the more well-known Chisto and wife Jean-Claude, who created, for example, “Running Fence,” which consisted of 25 miles of fabric panels through a stretch of Northern California

Starting in 2019, Munro, installed lights on 17 of the 40 acres devoted to the permanent exhibit, which now consists of four distinct parts using more than 100,000 LEDs connected by miles and fiber-optic cables.

The biggest of these consists of thigh-high stems topped with morphing colored orbs that make the fields look like something out of James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Then there’s Munro’s homage to the area’s vineyards and wineries, as expressed in 69 towers of 17,000 illuminated, color changing wine bottles. Finally, this feast for the senses recently added a field of “Fireflies” and a circumference of lighted “fishing poles.”

We bought $87 tickets to sit on a terrace overlooking the installation. But skip the extra expense. You get a complimentary drink of (bad) beer, wine, water or soda, a nice table, and early admission, all of which is unnecessary to beat the crowds if you go on a Monday, as we did.

Munro’s work has a mission — to create art you feel. The real impact of Sensorio comes when you walk out into it, another reason not to spend the extra dough on terrace seating. Even though, there were other people around us, we strolled though the lights with hushed reverence for something beyond the peaceful hills after a gorgeous sunset on a temperate California night.

It left me similarly aware of something more and bigger — as I did when we visited the millions of wintering Monarch butterflies that blanketed the trees and quietly fluttered around and on us at a remote Mexican preserve two years ago.

As I said, however, you must see it, since even these photos fail to convey its power.

The tawny hills of “Sensorio” before being transformed into a spectacle of color. The coming sunset alone was worth seeing.

The hills outside Paso Robles as they seem to imitate the colors of sunset. They don’t, we were told by a docent, but it looks that way.

The installation is populated by more than LED bulbs on thigh-high stems, connected by fiber-optic cable.

The second of four installations — 69 towers each made of clear wine bottles containing colored LEDs.

A new installation called “Fireflies,” which describes each little bush. It’s the third of four distinct parts of what is the now permanent exhibit of “Sensorio.”

The fourth and final part of the light exhibit called “Gone Fishing.”