Brendan McKay 2/6/24 Brendan McKay 2/6/24

Down Broken Roads

In search of perfection, and finding something else

Bleary eyed and fighting the urge to turn over and go back to sleep, I peeled myself out of bed and splashed some water on my face. It was 5:05am, the false dawn had arrived, and I came here to photograph a sunrise goddamit. I was going to make this happen.

It was probably within 15-20 minutes, bombing eastward in the darkness, that I realized this best laid plan - which was honestly not much of a plan at all - was not going to work out. Or at least work out the way I had imagined. Despite the early wakeup call on very little sleep, I hadn’t risen early enough to get the car deep out into the desert off Route 77 to capture the sun coming up over the horizon at the right time. All of this was complicated by the fact that I literally had no idea where I was going. I had looked at satellite imagery ahead of the roadtrip to try to figure out the perfect spot to photograph the 911 - pull offs, turn outs, country roads - but a bird’s eye, 2D view from above will never truly replace the value of on-site recce for planning out a shoot. “Fail to plan, and plan to fail”, I could hear an old soccer coach telling me. Oof.

So as the sky continued to brighten, I made a gametime call and swung onto the nearest gravel shoulder I could find. I just sat there for a bit, letting the engine tick down in the chilly morning air. I was sulking, big time, distracted by the imperfection of how the morning had played out so far. No small part of me wished I was back in that motel bed, as uncomfortable as it was. At least I would’ve been warm there under the covers.

I began to take some photos and found myself annoyed at nearly everything around me - the light, the big berm that blocked a line-of-site view of the horizon, the backdrop looking east cluttered by powerlines and utility towers. I’m not entirely sure where my mind was, but I knew for damn sure it wasn’t where I stood in that moment. Despite a daily meditation I have to be present for the here and now, I was anywhere but the here and now.

And then slowly, things began to change. The landscape certainly didn’t, but my outlook did. I sort of completely gave up on the goal I had in my head and just began to exist - in many respects, I did what I should’ve been doing all along. I trundled the car over a cattle gate and began to inch my way down a clay road, completely unaware of what lay ahead of but moving ahead anyways. The purpose of the morning shifted, from one that was highly surface level - composing that ‘perfect’ sunrise shot that would be the hero photograph of the trip - to one that was deeper, which was essentially one of awareness. Awareness of the stillness around me, no person or animal or quite honestly anything save for the western breeze shifting the tall grasses back and forth. Awareness of the red clay under my feet, the tire tracks that had passed back and forth taking someone somewhere unknown. Awareness of my transient existence in a land so vast I couldn’t see the end of it. Awareness that the point of these road trips should be the exploration of newness and one’s self rather than the memorialization of the trip itself. Awareness that I had finally found a sliver of peace.

With the separation of time, I realize that I love these photographs more than what could’ve been the realization of that ultimate, picture-perfect sunrise I had in my mind. They are photographs of reality. I was there. They are instant reminders of everything I felt that morning, both the lows and the highs of it. They are a reminder that purity of intention often breeds the best results. Just try to be here for it, whatever the ‘it’ may be.

Brendan McKay 5/28/19 Brendan McKay 5/28/19

Holbrook, AZ

“This place looks like someone’s memory of a town. And the memory is fading.” - Rust Cohle, True Detective Season 1

I crawled into town close to dusk, the August sun meanderning across the sky in the rearview mirror. Despite its inevitable march towards the horizon, it seemed in very little rush to get there, feebly holding onto the dregs of one of those last dog days of summer. I couldn’t really say the same for myself - after nearly 600 miles of driving since leaving Los Angeles earlier that morning, I was ready for everything to be over. I needed dinner, a couple of beers, a shower and a bed, and at that point I didn’t really care what order those came in.

Having lived in and around big cities for the last two decades of my life - first New York, then Boston and now LA - I’ve developed a deep fondness for the small towns of America. I don’t even know if I would call it fondness, as fondness suggests familiarity, and I can’t say I’ve ever spent enough time in one to become all that familiar. But I have an affinity towards them nevertheless. Despite the commercial and cultural significance of the large cities across the US, it is the tiny places - those speed trap towns in the flyover states - that I feel deeply connected to.

Holbrook was merely an overnight waypoint along my journey to New Mexico last year, and in many ways it felt like a caricature of itself. A loudspeaker blared muffled reports from the highschool football game a few blocks away as I strolled the main street to dinner, walking by borded up stores and vacant gravel lots. I think I was the only stranger in the cantina that night, neighbors and family members catching up over their meals together. As I shuffled back to my motel around 8, I was struck by the silence that had descended on everything, save for the rumble of a locomotive passing by.

I imagine most high schoolers at that game wanted nothing more than to make a clean break for something bigger, something better waiting for them in LA or New York or nearly anywhere else. Yet all I wanted to do was to stay there and get to know it. The stark reality is that these tiny dots on the map are fading and falling prey to time itself. Holbrook’s population is around 4,800 today - less than it was a decade ago and only some 2,500 more than what it was in 1950. There is a world where the Holbrooks of America exist on paper and in memories and nowhere else - it just feels like a matter of time. And I don’t know anything more patient than time.

So whenever I set out on a road trip, it’s not the grand sights or the once-in-a-lifetime vistas that I look forward to most. It’s the Holbrooks and its counterparts in Utah and Nevada and Idaho and New Mexico and all the other population-less-than-5,000-towns between the seaboards that pull at my heartstrings. I want to stop for them. I need to stop for them. So that I can bear witness before there’s nothing left to bear witness to.