If you're a movie buff, you've undoubtedly come across and perhaps embraced the genre that is called, the "road" movie.

There are tons of them. "Thelma & Louise" is an anthem to certain women. "Five Easy Pieces" and "Easy Rider" are early rebel classics from Jack Nicholson's filmography.

And who can forget the immortal work, "The Grapes of Wrath," chronicling the Dust Bowl migration during the Great Depression? This is yet another enduring icon of road picture making.

Deep down, I think most Americans love the road, the grit of it, the adventure, and the flexibility that it requires of us.

You can find yourself on the road, tuning into a self that is different than the everyday.

Partly because you don't know the servers in the cafes and restaurants, or the bends in all of the roads, or the pillows in the next hotel, you're thrown off your routines.

On a recent trip to Northern California, I was shaken out of my complacency by the roadside fauna, on Interstate 5, near Sacramento. Beautiful plantings, mostly bushes and hedges, featuring deep reds and purples and blues utterly took me by surprise.

Someone planned this hardy, but beautiful landscaping, and credit is due.

This unexpected display made me pay attention, and it gave me "aesthetic arrest." That's just not likely to occur as I autopilot my habitual highways down South.

On the road, you have a chance to get away. This seems obvious, but I think it's more subtle and worth exploring.

For instance, I've visited faraway places, yet I never felt I was "away," in the grand sense. I hadn't left behind my buzzing thoughts, my duties, my various tics and habits.

The open road, especially if you're driving great distances over time, makes you realize you're in a different dimension, a dreamscape, where the impossible and improbable, suddenly, aren't.

What you've taken for granted is now receding in the rearview mirror.

You begin to appreciate that you're a construct, an amalgam of intention and molding from outside, and now, you have a chance to tilt in the direction of becoming truly intentional, once more.

You find yourself thinking, "I chose where I live!" and "I can un-choose it, if I like!"

I can be here.

Or anywhere.

Or anything.

Gosh, look at that sunset!