The image is appropriate: an open road — wide, smooth, free of traffic (clearly not Seattle), with miles and miles of paved expanses ahead.

But where does it lead? That's precisely the question that Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Nina Gilden Seavey asks in her latest film, "The Open Road: America Looks at Aging," that will air on KCTS-TV at 8 p.m. Wednesday. For many of us, especially the 77 million baby boomers who are about to retire, our futures are wholly uncharted territory. Not only is this the generation that rebelled against conformity, refusing to do anything the way it's always been done, but boomers are also not the same people at age 55 or 65 that their relatives were 20 years ago.

"Researchers say we've gained 10 years biologically," says Abigail Trafford, author and one of the film's experts. So of course the boomers are going to do things in retirement that are completely different from their grandparents. The question is, what? With the gift of living another 10, 30 or even 50 years past retirement, what's next? The answers are sure to change our nation in profound ways. But, as the film (and my own observations) makes clear, few of us are thinking about it.

That's about to change. "Soon we will become a nation of Floridas," Seavey says. "By 2030, one in five Americans will be over 65. Thirty-nine states will have the same number of retirees as the Sunshine State does today."

For the project, Seavey traveled the country, talking to a wide range of people facing retirement, and their stories create an interesting pattern.

• There are many like Bob Levey, a columnist with The Washington Post, whose "deer in the headlights" expression shows the last thing he wants is to retire. He accepted an early retirement buyout at age 58. His family talked him into it, he says, because it was the "right thing to do" and would be good for him. "I don't know about that," he laughs, "unless you can say dangling me out of an eighth-floor window by my ankle and telling me, 'You need to think about something else,' is good for me!"

Another is John Ruby of Maryland, who worked on a Proctor & Gamble assembly line his entire career. He took the job out of high school and now, 28 years later, is given his hat. At his retirement party, his boss says the two best words to describe Ruby are "dependable" and "reliable." So I wonder, why do we require people to stop working if they're still healthy and happy with their jobs (a question, as you'll see, that begins the program)?

Information

About "The Open Road":

www.theopenroadfilm.com

• Others make the shift to retirement without effort, like the bunch who travel the country in their RVs and have a good old time reveling in their freedom. But there can be stages of retirement. Richard Friedman, M.D., did the "normal" retirement of tennis, golf and crossword puzzles for 12 years, then became a surgeon again for a nonprofit, donating his skills to the poor. As Marc Freedman, president of Civic Ventures, says in the film, "Doing nothing is very appealing to many people. But after a few years of retirement, because our lives have been so extended, people soon find they want to do more meaningful things."

• While a life of leisure, of volunteering and learning, will be the road taken by many retirees, the reality of longevity and living on a fixed income will chart a very different path for millions of other Americans. Mike Windecker, a taxi driver in Denver, can't afford to stop working — ever. Without a pension, savings or health insurance, he has no choice whether to work or retire. "If I get sick and can't work," he says, "I'll do what everybody else does, uh, I don't know, live off of — whatever."

Two women in the film are forced to return to work after retirement because their savings aren't enough to live on. One runs into blatant age discrimination in her job search.

• The luckiest retirees are the self-employed because they make up their own rules.

Mort Walker of Stamford, Conn., the cartoonist for Beetle Bailey, says, "You think back through history, and 40 was an old age at one time. You didn't live past 40. Sixty — forget it. Here I am at 80, and I feel alert and energetic. Why would I retire?"

Well, unless you're self-employed, most of us will face this question someday, and for 77 million boomers watching their career clocks wind down, it's likely to come sooner than expected. The good news is that "retirement" is no longer like our daddies did it. "We're on the doorstep of a profound change in the American life cycle today," says Civic Ventures' Freedman. "We're about to invent a new stage of life."

The road is indeed open, with new, exciting opportunities for people in their 50s, 60s and 70s who still have the energy, inquisitiveness and work ethic to go in new directions.

Liz Taylor's column runs Mondays in the Northwest Life section. A specialist in aging and long-term care for 30 years, she's worked with thousands of families and their elders. Write to P.O. Box 11601, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. You can see all of her columns at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/growingolder/