Fortunately, the people I was travelling with were in another vehicle and I was in the truck alone.  It gave me a great deal of time to ponder the many possibilities that are available to me from the different situations each additional mile of travel presented. The truck needed fuel and I had been driving for a few hours so it seemed like a good time and place to stop.
When I turned off of interstate 40 and paused momentarily at a stop sign, I glanced to my left and saw the two giant parallel belts of concrete upon which I had been travelling for hundreds of miles.  This view of the freeway from the side and below gave me a new perspective on it.   It was no longer just a conduit for a change of place.  It was a masterpiece of complex construction and technology that I had greatly unappreciated.  From this view point I realized it was a series of millions of stationary points-each having an individual identification and working together to form one tremendous system of travel.
  The road seemed like a natural part of the landscape, as if a giant rock had been dragged across the desert and left this tremendously long smooth trail.  Slithering through the pink sands around El Paso, the purple quartzite of South Dakota or the brown monolithic chunks of basalt outside of Spokane, the freeway maintains a universal constant in many ways.  The same basic traffic rules apply to the same graded curves designed by engineers who apply the same basic rules of physics and highway construction learned in the same basic engineering classes.  This "sameness" of purpose and design is simply assembled in different locations which gives each highway its own individual character.

This connection between places has become so busy and so full of life it seems a wonder how people could have ever existed here without it.  Its uses are so varied, and all are greeted and accepted with the same "no guarantee-use at your own risk" conditions.   If I was a serial killer I could dump my victims there along its weeds and fences.  If I was travelling economy class, I could get shelter from bad weather up under its bridges.  Travelling in style with air conditioning through the dry sweltering desert I could glide in luxury over its smooth computer designed bridges and interchanges.                 These concrete strips can deliver adrenaline-pumping adventure with unexpected circumstances rushing toward you at seventy five miles an hour.  They can also link you to safety and help when fuel filters clog or mechanical difficulties cause problems.  These graceful curving bands of steel and concrete have been created like fine works of art on the landscape--like a giant delicate filigree of precious metals and jewels Although the metals are steel and the jewels are glass, it's beauty and value cannot be denied.  These roadways are real treasures.