What I am getting from this is that there are as many individual paths to follow while reading and managing to stay on the main trail (or at least in sight or knowledge of) as there are individuals. However, to perhaps get the most out of the act, it behooves a reader to understand that there are many sidetrails and be able to not only peruse them, but learn to tell a maidenhair fern from poison ivy as well. Not necessary, but helpful along the way and it’s all there somewhere. Eventually, what we are looking for will be found by experience and knowledge. Or at any rate, our concept of what we are looking for.

I realize, for example, that while you present us the desert, I reply from the forest.