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'Just magical': Guests flock to River of Lights as holiday season shifts toward Christmas
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As the sun set on Sunday, hundreds of people walked inside ABQ BioPark’s Botanic Garden. Some rolled strollers while others held hands with their significant others and children.
As they saw two, 18-foot candy cane-shaped lights greet them at the entryway their eyes lit up. Some veered into the Spanish-Moorish Gardens where the kiddos smiled and pointed out the glowing wreaths to their parents.
“I like this,” Eliana Padilla, 6, said. “They’re beautiful.”
The candy canes and wreaths were among the over 700 light displays and animated sculptures at the 28th annual River of Lights, which started on Saturday.
“All of our lighted sculptures are welded by hand and in-house by our incredibly talented River of Lights artisans,” BioPark Society spokesperson Danielle Flores Mills said.
“Then there are the little things that people won’t even notice, including the (fake) snow that has gingerbread in them,” said Kent Berry, New Mexico BioPark Society’s special events director. “... The Africa scene, we added probably 100 blades of grass, of just green lights, to make it look like grass around the animals. So, there’s little fun nuances as well that we’ve added this year that were different.”
For Albuquerque resident Matt Darnell, the River of Lights is more than a place to ring in the holiday season.
As he looked at his children pointing out the new alligators that were added to the garden pond, he said being at the River of Lights is “just magical.”
In 2007, he said, he popped the question to then-girlfriend Beth Darnell at the Sasebo Japanese Garden.
“I wanted to propose to (her) and I (was trying) to figure out how to do it,” Darnell said. “A friend of mine said, ‘Take her to the River of Lights. It’s really pretty and romantic. So, I just brought her with a ring in my pocket.”
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“It’s just a really special memory,” Beth Darnell said. “We like to tell our kids (the event) ...”
“... was a lot smaller,” Matt Darnell said. “We were in the garden alone when I proposed.”
As the Darnell family continued walking, other visitors shuffled their feet to the nearby desert conservatory where they heard Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” while looking at the lit-up cacti or listened to The Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ Safari” as they strolled past a 12-foot hammerhead shark on the other side of the conservatory.
Volunteer and Los Lunas resident John Repper said he comes back every year to see changes made to the event and to talk to people who come from all over to get lost in the holiday magic.
“(I enjoy) giving them information about what’s going on around here (and) a little history of the River of Lights,” he said.
For Delainy Largo, who visited from the Navajo Nation, the event represents the time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ.
