I just revisited my earlier experimentation, and, clarifying what I learned yesterday, I found that once I switch "HD" to gallery view I can navigate from "HD" always as my starting point with the left/right arrows and the path bar and remain in gallery view, but if I double-click on anything it opens up in my default column view.
As far as I can tell (including with searching), that's the closest you can get to the "universal" setting you're looking for.
