Quo Vadis - A Pilgrim's Journey
Quo Vadis is a reflective podcast about following your calling — and what happens when you step into the unknown.
Drawing on myth, psychology, spirituality, and lived experience, the podcast explores the inner journey behind outer adventures. Each episode moves through themes such as transformation, surrender, purpose, fear, and meaning, inspired by Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.
Hosted by pilgrim, writer, and long-distance hiker Uffe Sveegaard, Quo Vadis weaves personal storytelling with conversations and reflections on what it means to live a life guided not by achievement, but by calling.
While the journey often unfolds through wilderness trails like the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail, Quo Vadis is ultimately about the terrain within and how we return home changed.
This podcast is for listeners drawn to depth, mythic language, spiritual inquiry, and the courage it takes to live a meaningful life.
Quo Vadis - A Pilgrim's Journey
Episode 12: The Return
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In this final episode of the first Quo Vadis cycle, I speak with mythologist and storyteller Dr. Catherine Svehla, host of the podcast Myth Matters, about the most overlooked and difficult stage of the Hero's Journey: the return.
Inspired by Joseph Campbell's idea of "the return with the elixir," we explore what it means to come home after deep transformation - and how to live with what you have learned.
After five months on the Pacific Crest Trail, I walked around Nuuk with a secret inside my body - the knowledge that I could carry far more than I believed. But how do you share what you've discovered without sounding like someone who had a revelation on a mountain ridge? How do you find a new way to live in the world—not as the old self, but as the transformed one?
This is where the hero must learn that the journey never truly ends, but continues in another way.
This episode closes the first Quo Vadis cycle. The journey continues, though -now in English - as the path leads toward a new call: Continental Divide Trail. I'm hiking this brutal 3.000 mile trail next year, though it truly scares me, but at the same time draws me, so I gotta go ..
For as T.S. Eliot wrote: "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."