The author describes the caravan as making detours, stopping and starting, and unloading and reloading. In this way , the caravan becomes a metaphor for a journey to a destination.

All of us are on a journey that involves detours and stops and starts. Sometimes it even seems like we are going backwards. We unload emotional and figurative "baggage" and we take on new "baggage". In the end, all of us are going in a similar direction towards death and we all eventually get there.