PerfectWhelm with Eric Slivoskey: The Podcast That Helps Enhance Your Life · Eric Slivoskey, life coach

45. A Brief History of The Camino and Why I Walked 500 Miles On This Ancient Trail: Part 7 of My Let’s Go Around The Globe Travel Series

·27 min

Eric starts with Thoreau and the pull to live deliberately. That idea becomes the lens for the Camino de Santiago. He describes the pilgrimage he took in 2016 across western Spain. The walk began in a small village in France and carried him through a long stretch of the Camino. He uses that route to reflect on what it means to strip life down to what matters. One thread is grief. He wanted time to mourn a significant loss and work through it. Another thread is gratitude. By 45, he says he had a wife, three children, friends, a respected coaching life, teaching work, and a life he could genuinely celebrate. He also names the harder parts that brought him there. Near-death experiences, illness, and childhood trauma all shaped the person doing the walking. The Camino gave him room to see how far he had come. It also gave him space to thank God, or at least the version of God he was beginning to re-examine. He talks about how much of his work life had been spent indoors. On the trail, he was outside almost all the time. That shift made the landscape itself part of the story. France and Spain, the waterfalls, lakes, forests, plateaus, deserts, and plains all become part of his reflection. Nature feels like a place of peace and connection. It also nudges him toward bigger questions about Catholicism, evangelical Pentecostalism, doubt, and the meaning of faith after inherited certainties start to loosen. This episode sits inside his travel series and sets up more Camino detail later while staying centered on the inner work of the walk.

As heard by us

A reflective walk that turns travel into questions about grief, gratitude, and purpose.

A long walk becomes a frame for thinking out loud as Eric uses the Camino de Santiago to work through deliberate living, grief, gratitude, and what still matters after a hard life.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a Camino reflection that stays grounded in lived experience, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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