We have come to associate excessive holiday lighting with the garish participants in "tacky light tours" every December. But a winery in western Loudoun County has a new twist - a "lighting of the vines" that blasts the eastern Blue Ridge Mountains with sprawling glare visible from several miles away.
"Agritourism" is supposed to help rural places stay rural, but in this case it has become an excuse to destroy the nighttime character of countryside that residents have been fighting for decades to keep country. According to publicity, 10,000 vines are lined with 15,000 lights . . . intensely bright white lights. And it is the intensity--and density--of this lighting that make it harmful. The lights are too bright, blue-white, and numerous over too large an area. Unfortunately, exemptions in poorly written outdoor lighting ordinances allow for this kind of abuse of 'holiday (or seasonal) lighting' that otherwise should warm our hearts, rather than blind our eyes and despoil rural nightscapes.
Loudoun County marketing seems a little bit ambivalent about the lighting, simultaneously bragging that the blazing vineyard can be seen for miles (note: visibility for miles is a checkbox for light pollution) while admitting it looks like something from a 'sci-fi movie', yet then praising the "glorious golden glow". Christmas Lights & Holiday Events in Loudoun County, VA 2022 (visitloudoun.org)
Does this look like a "glorious golden glow" to you? Is it seasonal or spiritual? Or just visible from space?
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