Quo Vadis - A Pilgrim's Journey

Uffe Sveegaard

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.

  1. 6D AGO

    The Anatomy of the Call

    Send us a text When a person follows a true calling, something remarkable — and very real — happens. The brain begins to change. The body follows. Belief turns into action before willpower even enters the room. Joe Dispenza calls it placebo. Myth calls it a miracle. I call it the call. In this episode of Quo Vadis, I speak with spiritual teacher Charlotte Fruergaard about the moment a call ignites. Drawing on Dispenza’s work in You Are the Placebo, we explore how a call can function as a spontaneous neuro-emotional re-coding — a moment where identity and direction are reorganized in an instant. This is not about planning or reasoning. It is about the arrival of a certainty that can seem entirely irrational from the outside, yet you take it in as naturally as a mother lifts her child. That is what struck me on the Camino. My own call to the Pacific Crest Trail did not come from logic; it arrived as a fait accompli. Something in me had already moved, and I simply had to live my way into what was already true.

    48 min

  2. JAN 17

    The CDT doesn't like people - a conversation with Tim Voors

    Send us a text In this episode of Quo Vadis, I speak with Tim Voors about the Continental Divide Trail — the most remote, demanding, and psychologically challenging of the great American thru-hikes. Tim has completed the Pacific Crest Trail, Te Araroa in New Zealand, and the CDT. He is also the author of The Great Divide, a book that approaches the trail not as an achievement, but as an encounter with fear, humility, and awe. Our conversation explores what draws people toward something they know will test them deeply. We talk about fear — not as something to be eliminated, but as something to be transformed into respect. About solitude, uncertainty, navigation, wildlife, and the mental strategies required to keep moving forward when comfort and certainty disappear. This episode is a conversation about the threshold: the moment where longing outweighs fear and you choose exposure over safety, and about what the Continental Divide Trail gives back to those who dare to walk it.

    1h 4m

  3. JAN 3

    The Dangerous Longing

    Send us a text Welcome to Quo Vadis — a podcast about following your calling into a magical hero’s journey, in order to find your way home. This is the first episode in a new English cycle. In my earlier Danish series, I told the story of thruhiking the Pacific Crest Trail through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Now a new threshold is approaching: the Continental Divide Trail — a 5,000-kilometre remote route from Mexico to Canada, high, exposed, lonely, and often not a trail at all. In this episode, I explore a paradox: Why are we sometimes drawn toward something that genuinely scares us? Why does the call to adventure so often arrive wrapped in fear? To answer that, I move through two stories. The first is Tarjei Vesaas’ The Ice Palace — a Nordic classic in which a child walks alone into a frozen labyrinth of dangerous beauty, as if compelled by a secret inner pull. The second is my own childhood story from a Greenlandic village in the 1970s: The Fish Crate — a memory of stepping into a fragile little vessel and drifting toward the pack ice, seduced by its glittering promise, until the moment the ice moves and the world shifts into terror. Together, these stories point to the same experience: the mixture of fear and longing that philosophers call the Sublime — the confrontation with something overwhelmingly vast, powerful, and real. This episode is the beginning of my new journey toward the CDT — and an attempt to name the feeling at its root: the dangerous longing.

    32 min

  4. 12/21/2025

    Episode 12: The Return

    Send us a text 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."

    1h 5m

  5. 11/11/2025

    Episode 13: Mester af to verdener - samtale med Nana Askov

    Send us a text Når helten vender hjem fra sin rejse, begynder den virkelige prøve: at leve det, man har lært. Joseph Campbell kalder dette stadie Master of Two Worlds – evnen til at være forbundet med det evige og samtidig fuldt nærværende i det menneskelige. I dette afsnit vender jeg tilbage til Nana Askov, forfatter til bogen ”Dit kald” som var med i første episode om kaldet. Sammen taler vi om, hvordan man finder balancen mellem sjæl og verden, og hvordan man kan leve vågent midt i hverdagens rytme. Vi reflekterer over The Matrix, om sjælens kald, og om hvordan hver afslutning altid rummer et nyt begyndelsespunkt. En samtale om at mestre både det magiske og det almindelige – og at bringe sin visdom hjem.

    1h 4m

  6. 10/11/2025

    Episode 11: Eliksiren

    Send us a text I denne episode når vi kulminationen på heltens rejse: eliksiren eller gaven. Det er det trin, hvor helten modtager en indsigt, der rækker langt ud over rejsen selv – en gave, som kan deles med andre. Man kunne tro, at min gave var at nå Canada efter flere tusinde kilometer på PCT'en. Men det var ikke dér, jeg fandt den. For skønt jeg følte, turen var slut ved grænsen til Canada, vidste jeg, at jeg måtte tilbage til High Sierra i Californien for at færdiggøre det stræk, jeg havde skippet på grund af den enorme snemængde. Så jeg vendte tilbage. Men midt i bjergene – udmattet, med en snestorm på vej og kroppen ved sammenbrudets rand – opdagede jeg noget fundamentalt: Forskellen mellem at følge sjælens kald og egoets insisteren. Dette er historien om, hvordan den ægte eliksir viste sig gennem lidelse og fald. Om at slippe taget i stedet for at holde fast. Om at lære at skelne mellem længslens stemme og egoets krav. For den største gave fra rejsen var ikke at nå målet – men at lære, hvornår man skal stoppe.

    38 min

  7. 09/27/2025

    Camino del Norte - Santiago de Compostela (episode 6)

    Send us a text I dette afsnit finder vi ind i caminoens dybere rytme. Emma og jeg deler en stille hviledag, hvor en enkel pilgrimsang folder sig ud til en større erkendelse: Vi kom for at finde fred, men undervejs finder vi kærlighed.  Vi begynder at møde flere pilgrimme, da vi nærmer os Santiago og pludselig er det blevet dagen, hvor vi skal se den by, vi har vandret imod så mange uger. Lyden af sækkepiber fortæller os, at vi er nær og det er en bevæget gang frem til pladsen foran den store katedral.  Vi deltager i pilgrimsmessen og laver senere vores eget ritual, som vi har aftalt. Vores rejse slutter ved Verdens Ende - Finisterre - hvor Emma finder sin musling i havet og jeg genbesøger min indgangsbøn til turen og til mit liv:  - Leder jeg stadig efter et hjerte af guld?

    25 min

  8. 09/20/2025

    Camino del Norte - Emma bliver pilgrim (episode 5)

    Send us a text Taxien kommer for sent, men gensynet kan ikke vente. I dette afsnit møder jeg min guddatter Emma i Asturien, og vi begiver os ud på hendes første dage på caminoen. Fra den den lille fiskerby Cudillero til stejle stigninger, svedige etaper og uforglemmelige møder med andre pilgrimme, bliver vores vandring sammen en fortælling om glæde, strabadser og fællesskab. Emma træder ind i caminoens rytme med ungdommeligt mod, småskader og et åbent sind. Vi deler smil, tapas og historier med mennesker fra hele verden – fra italienske Paula og hendes ven Stefano til canadiske Caroline, der drømmer om PCT’en. Sammen synger vi pilgrimsangen Buen camino peregrinos, deler livsfortællinger og opdager, hvordan vejen knytter os tættere til hinanden og til noget større. Det er et kapitel om at finde sit eget tempo, bære hinanden gennem træthed og opdage magien i de uventede møder.

    25 min
See All (25)

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Uffe Sveegaard
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Quo Vadis - A Pilgrim's Journey
  • Show Website
    Quo Vadis - A Pilgrim's Journey