Kay:
Hello, there family. We have got such a fun week for you here on the Kay & Shi Show. In fact, to get ready for the recordings of these episodes we just read poems and did some interpretive dancing.
Shi:
That is not a lie. We also smelled some essential oils and held some crystals. So welcome to Nature Week here on the Kay & Shi Show.
Kay:
We love nature so very much and much of Shila and I’s spiritual selves come to life when we are in nature, engaging with aspects of nature or relating our lives to nature. So, we’re excited to break it down into four parts this week, and first up, we’re going to talk about forests and trees.
Shi:
Well, I love that we’re doing the nature feature week and if you’re a nature freak here in nature week alongside us, we know you will enjoy this just as much as we do. We find so many beautiful lessons expressed in nature. I think it’s one of the best teachers and often overlooked just because it doesn’t use the same human words that we do in language. I feel that so much, perhaps even the most, I think I’m going to say it the most in environments of forest and trees.
Kay:
Well, trees are such an incredible thing. They’re basically like the human plant companion. Nothing happens on human life, on this planet without the power of trees. Now, our bodies are designed to intake oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and trees are designed to intake carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. They are our literal natural counterparts.
Shi:
And they’re so beautiful and science is now showing that it’s called forest bathing, that there are actual great effects for you both mentally and physically just by spending time among trees and in forests and being able to you know, be grateful and it’s hard not to be in awe when you’re in that kind of situation. But the kinds of situations that Kay and I love to maybe flex our nature freak muscle a little bit is in regular cityscapes or neighborhoods where you sometimes will feel an energy that the trees aren’t appreciated as much as they should be.
Kay:
Well, sometimes a tree in a city gets walked by because it’s implanted in concrete and might not be a part of a beautiful natural forest and so sometimes, they just start blending into the scenery. So, we do our best when we are in cities and towns to recognize the trees for what they are, those beautiful human counterparts, their gorgeous shape providing life-giving selves, and to recognize them in their spiritual capacity.
Shi:
This love of trees and the forest, in particular, is something that we also share, I also share with my husband, Chad. He’s a formerly certified arborist, worked with the horticulture department at the University of Nevada for two years. He sits on the board for our local arboretum. Needless to say, he loves plants. He loves nature. He loves trees a lot and we both love hiking. It’s been one of the beautiful habits that’s emerged for us in the second half of our marriage so far and we have a lot of fun hikes that we just nothing’s better than getting out together. But one tree, in particular, stands out to us, always on our hikes and that is the Quaking Aspen. If you’ve ever been in a grove of Quaking Aspen, you know they’re beautiful. They’ve got white trunks; they’ve got light little leaves that just quake in the slightest little breeze. So, they look like they’re glittering and shimmering.
Kay:
They sparkle.
Shi:
Exactly and especially when the sunlight’s coming through…
Kay:
Oh my gosh.
Shi:
…and they grow in groves which means it’s actually one big tree underneath the ground. It’s one big root system that emerges little sprouts that are all unique and different. So, I think they really feel that connection like the human family. We’re all one on the inside, that same human life force energy, but we sprout individually as unique humans and I love seeing that expressed and reflected in the nature of Quaking Aspen trees.
Kay:
Now, Shi calls Quaking Aspen trees the little sprouts that come up, but they can actually reach a height of 20 feet.
Shi:
Yeah. Humongous.
Kay:
They can be very, very large but they’re absolutely beautiful and they are seasonal, which means that in the fall time you can expect to see them being a beautiful yellow color and they’re just gorgeous. You know, one of my favorite types of trees that we’ve gotten a lot of exposure to is the Redwood tree. We’ve gotten to experience the great Redwood forest in Northern California and Southern Oregon as our parents live in Southern Oregon, so we get to travel there in the summertime, but much like the grove of Aspens, Redwood trees grow in families, which means that of the same tree the DNA family gets spread out and that’s how you get a grove of Redwoods. It’s not all connected by the same tree underneath, but they are part of a similar family, and just love the way that trees are able to carry on their DNA in a very similar way to humans.
Shi:
I feel like you can feel that kinship when you’re among a family of Redwoods and they have their different expressions as you come among different groups and things. Got to take a shout-out for our Evergreen trees. We just love Pine trees and Evergreen trees. They’re just so beautiful. We live in an Alpine mountain, and these are just the green giant warriors that cover the mountains that give the best smells and of course bring a little feeling of Christmas 12 months a year.
Kay:
Now we can’t justify cutting down a Christmas tree every single year, so we have actually moved over into fake trees in our families for the Christmas holidays. But we love to engage in those tree traditions to bring them inside, to honor the trees that give that evergreen beauty to the world and places like forests. We hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s tree talk and we hope that maybe you will come onto our social media or into our Facebook group and let us know what’s your favorite type of tree and why do you love it?
Shi:
All right. We’ll see you on the next installment here in nature freak week.
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Shi:
Alright, welcome back. We are talking nature all week and, in this installment, we are focusing on another favorite of ours, the mountains.
Kay:
Mountains are so cool. Now they definitely have their own individual energy about them. Some of our favorite mountains even have a lot of mysticism surrounding them like Mount Shasta, where we visit very often, but mountains are just majestic…
Shi:
Oh my gosh.
Kay:
…and gigantic…
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
…and amazing in their own way.
Shi:
I love the way that their ominousness can really remind you of just the perspective of your place on this gigantic rock spinning through unfathomably huge space and when you are juxtaposed next to a mountain it just helps, I think ground you, put you in that awe-inspired state. We’re in a region where you literally are surrounded by mountains so it’s easy for them to sometimes fade into the background. But I know there are times when even coming up the road up into our house just two nights ago with my eight-year-old in the car. She goes, “That mountain is just so beautiful,” and it’s true. We have this magnificent view, and we get to see it every day, but mountains have an energy and a signature, and we’ve had a particular experience with a local mountain here that we want to bring forward and share with you.
Kay:
Now, we were on our way down from Lake Tahoe, from Lake Tahoe to Reno on a highway called Mount Rose Highway, that goes right alongside you can probably guess, Mount Rose. Now Mount Rose is a local, beautiful mountain with two distinct peaks. One of the peaks is higher than the other and the smaller peak hosts a very popular local ski resort called Mount Rose Ski Resort. But we were on our way back from Lake Tahoe when we rounded a corner towards sunset in the day and something really special happened
Shi:
That sunset was striking the summit, so the taller of the two peaks in such a way that the only way Kay, and I can describe it as we came around that corner and the summit of Mount Rose came into our view and the sun was on it was that time warped and slowed for a moment in the car. I know we’re getting like weird, energetic woo-woo on you, but it was such a tangible experience for both of us in the moment. We both felt it energetically in the same exact way. It was like we came around the corner, went, whoa.
Kay:
Like the air sucked out of the car.
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
Like we both gasped like literal [gasp].
Shi:
Yeah. Both of us gasped and we kind of like pulled to the side for a minute just to like kind of get out of the road and then manage to bring ourselves back in. Luckily, we were the only ones on the road, and not that we were dangerously swerving, but it was this moment of just expansion and compression and profoundness and perspective, and it was amazing.
Kay:
It was like the energy of the mountain made itself suddenly visible to the two of us and we know it’s woo-woo. But it was really incredible to have that experience and to recognize the energetic signature of the mountain. Ever since that particular experience at Mount Rose, I personally have felt way more connected to all mountains, most especially a favorite mountain that we love to visit very often, Mount Shasta.
Shi:
Well, Mount Shasta is special to our family because it’s the halfway point between mom and dad up in Brookings, Oregon, and us down here in Reno, Nevada. So, oftentimes we’ll meet halfway there and exchange children if they’re going up for a visit or coming home from one, or if we’re traveling up and back, we like to stay there so it’s only a four hour and a four-hour drive or a little bit less than that on either side. So, it has become this beloved spot for us that we get to visit and stay at three or four times a year.
Kay:
Now, Mount Shasta actually has a lot of lure around it for potentially being a place of great spiritual power, and apparently, there’s some vortex energy there and…
Shi:
Yeah, and there used to be aliens.
Kay:
Yeah. Have like a city underneath the mountain and that’s why there are weird cloud formations and things like that. But as to the validity of the story of aliens, we will let that be for time to tell. But Shasta definitely has a beautiful, special energy and when you’re at the bottom of it looking up, it is just an incredible gleaming object. Sometimes we drive by her, and she’s covered in clouds, and we like to say…
Shi:
Yeah, she’s hiding.
Kay:
…Shasta is hiding today.
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
And some days we come around and she’s gleaming in the beautiful sunshine. It’s fun to see her on her whole display. But we love mountains. We really seem to connect with them on an energetic level and we’re having so much fun getting to bring this stuff here to you in nature freak week. Next up, we’re going to talk about animals.
Shi:
All right.
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Kay:
If you have yet to join us over on Facebook, we have a really cool group called Everyday Motivation with your Sisters Kay & Shi.
Shi:
And as you can imagine, we post motivation every day from your sisters Kay & Shi right there in the group and we love to know things. This is like our closest, I feel social media family. This is where we share the most, we interact the most and we would love to have you as part of that family. So, come on over and like the Kay & Shi page on Facebook and join our group. We’ll get you right in and we can’t wait to welcome you.
Kay:
We want to hear some of the things that you have for us here on nature freak week. Do you share our love for nature? Come into the group and tell us, we want to see you. Search for us on Facebook, Everyday Motivation with Kay and Shi.
Shi:
Now back to the show.
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Shi:
Alright, nature freak week is underway. Today we are freaking out about animals, our fellow other living biological beings on this planet. They are diverse. They are unique. They are varied and many and beautiful and we celebrate them here today on the Kay & Shi Show.
Kay:
Now a quick shout out here at the beginning to our beloved pet animals. Kay here. I have a beautiful, pure bread, German shepherd. Her name is Luna. She is such a protector girl and we’re so glad to have her as a part of our family.
Shi:
And we have brother dogs, Buddy and Boomer. They are five years old this summer, which is kind of crazy to think about and we love them so, so much. Two black labs. Kay and I always grew up with black labs. These labs come from two yellow parents, but we were buying them in replacement of our 10-year-old black lab who had died. Fun story, our son, the night the puppies were born, who did not know we were getting puppies said,”Hey mom, I had a dream last night that JB–our old dog–licked a litter of puppies and they turned black,” and we found out that the puppies were black. So, so fun when we got to pick out our two black labs, I guess they were meant to be with our family, Buddy and Boomer.
Kay:
Well, what a fun, spiritual kind of interaction with the animals…
Shi:
Yeah.
Kay:
…through your old dog, bringing you the new black labs and we definitely have felt a good spiritual connection to animals for our lives, particularly birds and whales.
Shi:
Yep. In fact, our mom gives us our love of birds. So, shout out to our mom.
Kay:
Hey mom.
Shi:
You’ve always had the posters or the books. You notice them on drives. You talk about them and identify them. When I was younger, I just wasn’t at that level. I never was disinterested in it, but I never quite understood the interest and here as I get older, I definitely feel more attunement to the bird life around me. They’re majestic and amazing, beautiful creatures and so I feel so blessed that we get to observe them here on this planet and they’re here in such abundance.
Kay:
We have a lot of birds in our community and our area of the world is actually a hotspot for one of our favorite birds, which is hawks.
Shi:
We love hawks. In fact, for me, a guide that’s come forward over and over again through just learning and teachings and growth is Marcus Aurelius, the famous stoic leader from ancient Greece, and he really stood for a lot of amazing ideals. I just get this idea that his spirit is carried in hawks. So, we like to call hawks “Hawkus” or “Hawkus” Aurelius.
Kay:
So anytime we see “Hawkus” we know that we’ve got protection happening. We know that we are connected to one another. There are a few hawk nests that are present here in my neighborhood. We’ve got a lot of big trees and so we see them often, we hear them often. It’s just wonderful to kind of have that reminder. Our mom really loved hawks when she lived in this region as well and so they always remind us of her. Then we even have birds that remind us of our family members. Whenever we see blue jays, our Nana passed in August of 2021, and now whenever we see blue jays, we just know Nana’s near.
Shi:
That’s Nana. She’s with us and we just love to notice the birds and watch them. We feel that they have a subtle, spiritual, energetic signature to deliver and if you can be tuned into it and pick up on it’s amazing. Of course, owls are incredible too. Our mom gets to experience amazing bald eagles and herons and beautiful bird life up there. But as Kay mentioned, we love birds, and then, Shila here, I have a special love for a very, very large creature, the largest mammal, in fact, whales.
Kay:
Well, whales are fantastic, and we feel so lucky that our parents live on the Oregon coast and get to be in a place where we get to witness whales pretty often. At least once a year we get to see them. They get to see them all the time. But we get to see them in the waters, and they are just majestic and beautiful and large and mysterious in their own way because the sea world is so much different from the world on land.
Shi:
Right, and they’re just so ancient and I’ve heard them described spiritually as kind of the timekeepers and wisdom keepers of the earth and I love that they bring forward whether it’s that energy or just that energy in general of being humongous and yet gentle and slow yet intentional and seemingly so wise and they’re just so beautiful. There’s a famous story in the Chad and Shi couple where we went on a whale watching trip early on in our marriage and there was a whale really close, but I was so excited. I do this whole thing on the video where I’m like, ooooh, ooooh running over to the side of the boat, like oooh.
Kay & Shi:
A whale.
Shi:
So here we are 12 years after that trip, Chad will still go…
Kay & Shi:
Oooooh.
Shi:
Yeah, about whales because I just love them that much.
Kay:
Well, Shila actually even has a small whale glass totem that she picked up while we were in New York at the natural history museum where there is a giant blue whale…
Kay & Shi:
Replica
Kay:
…hanging from the ceiling and it is incredible, and that little glass whale is a beautiful spiritual totem that you carry to this day.
Shi:
Yeah. I love it. Our little whale stands for protection, and we like to bring him on trips and hold him and it’s been fun to have him in everything from conference settings to airplanes and everything in between. It’s nice to have a physical anchor like that to remind us of our great animal friends, the whales. Before we sign off on the animal portion of nature freak week, I would love to just give a quick shout-out to–I know of my own evolution and you as well–towards the smallest animals on the planet. Those little insects, those spiders, those flying things. Things that I know in the past I would’ve just murdered because they were inside of my house. I know, I’ve become more and more apt to try and save it when I can.
Kay:
Well, life is to be respected in all kinds of ways, and the more that Shi and I have grown in our spiritual journey, the more respect for animals that we have found in our life. In fact, if you are listeners frequently here of the Kay & Shi Show, you know that we don’t eat animals any longer in our diet. That was something that was a part of our world for a long time but has come out as our spiritual connection to them has grown. So, we hope you’re enjoying nature freak week here on the Kay & Shi Show. Today, we talked about animals and next up we’re going to discuss bodies of water.
Shi:
Yeah.
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Kay:
Hey there, family. We’re back again for our final installment of nature freak week and today we’re going to discuss bodies of water.
Shi:
Well, welcome back you freaks of nature. You nature freaks. We’re so glad you’re fellow freaks alongside us for this amazing planet. That is so beautiful. I was looking at our list. We talked about forests, and we talked about mountains, and we talked about animals, and now we want to talk about bodies of water. But I’m like, “Well, what about the deserts? And what about the tundra? And what about all of the amazing flora and fauna and other things that we didn’t get to touch?” So maybe we’ll have to do a freak week addition part two. But bodies of water are something that we think are just–as so many humans do naturally draw to them–so majestic, so reflective, so mysterious and so powerful.
Kay:
There are three bodies of water that they want to give a special shout-out to because we grew up with them here in our region. It’s actually a very special trio of bodies of water. The first body of water is that of Lake Tahoe, which is about a 30-minute drive from our hometown Reno, where we were born and raised in Reno, Nevada. So, 30 minutes away is Lake Tahoe, and the sister body of water to Lake Tahoe is called Pyramid Lake which is surrounded by an incredible amount of Native American mystery and then was home to many tribes and things and there’s a lot of local lore about Pyramid Lake. But those two lakes are some of the only lakes in the world that are connected by a river. So, there’s a river that flows from Lake Tahoe to Pyramid, and it is called the Truckee River. Now, if you don’t know this, most rivers flow from the top of a mountain or from a lake to the ocean. And the fact that these are two bodies of water, that get fed from one to the other and via a river, and the river does not flow to the ocean, makes our region’s three bodies of water pretty unique.
Shi:
I love it and they’re all connected, which is beautiful and just from the geographic standpoint, this means that the basin where Pyramid Lake is was actually a humongous body of water at one point and if you’re familiar with the Northern Nevada region, fun fact for you, it used to be part of Lahontan Lake. So, if you know where Lahontan Lake and Pyramid Lake are, you can imagine that that was all one body of water. So, no wonder it attracted a river, just like a little mini ocean way back in ancient times. But another special shout-out of a body of water in our region that’s worth mentioning is the Pacific Ocean. Now a little bit farther from us, we can’t even necessarily get to it in less than an hour, but in about four hours, we can be at the ocean. Our parents were raised by the ocean. So, there were lots of trips to the Pacific Ocean when we were younger and now, of course, our parents live cliffside of the amazing Pacific Ocean in Brookings, Oregon. Every time we’re there, we just marvel at the beauty, the magnitude, the depth of what is the ocean and I know there’s always a lot of reverence and grace as we observe the ocean.
Kay:
We’ve been lucky enough to experience both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. The Atlantic Ocean didn’t come into our world a little bit more until we were older, but it’s been interesting to see the similarities and the differences. Now, both are giant and majestic. Both are incredibly beautiful, but the Pacific Ocean has a lot more movement than the Atlantic Ocean. Well, bigger waves and the salination is totally different. In fact, fun fact, at the point where the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean meet, there is a definitive line in the water, and you can actually see that the Atlantic Ocean is a lighter color than the Pacific Ocean because of the different ecosystems that they have. So, there’s a point when you’re crossing that one giant 60% of the world, that’s all ocean where the two of them meet and you see the line and it’s pretty incredible. You can actually go check out videos on YouTube, it is really amazing to see. But we’ve had a lot more experience with that beautiful Pacific Ocean, but both of them hold those character qualities of majestic-ness, gigantic-ness, and the fact that they’re their whole own ecosystems and world underneath the water.
Shi:
I recently heard a discussion where they were talking about the fact that–and Kay, you and I have talked about this before–honestly, the air is like an ocean. That is what we breathe in and out just like fish breathe in and out the water. It’s what we all live in and so we live at the bottom of the air ocean. If you think about that, that’s kind of a trip.
Kay:
Does that mean we are bottom feeders?
Shi:
It kind of does. It really does.
Kay:
The lobsters of the land.
Shi:
But I always think about too, that turning point from the sand into the ocean and the way that it transitions into the next ecosystem and the next death. There’s still so much mystery around the ocean and truly one of the next frontiers. We all look up but looking down into the ocean there’s so much there and I think one of the things that we always talk about is how powerful the body of the ocean is. It’s majestic, it’s amazing, and you love it, and you feel tiny next to it, and I don’t want to mess with the ocean. I want to like dip my toe in, ride boats on it, fly over it, but I am not interested in super scuba diving or little boat adventures, or fishing out there. I want to be as respectful and safe with the ocean as possible.
Kay:
If you’ve been lucky enough to experience the ocean, you’ve likely had that feeling of reverence, especially in the fact that it is the largest perpetual motion machine in the world. The lapping of the waves never stops. Be it Pacific or Atlantic the waves are always going. The tide is always pulling in and out. It’s one of those things that’s almost as sure as the sunrise and the sunset are the tides pulling in and out and the waves always going. It has its own rhythm, its own groove, and it moves automatically without humans being there to make it move and it has an incredible power in the amount of motion that it creates.
Shi:
We’ve yet to get to experience the Indian or the Arctic Oceans but look forward to putting those on our bucket list and getting to see those beauties as well. Love that the tides move to the rhythm of the moon and that the oceans respond to the moon and just understanding that relationship demonstrates how connected everything in nature is. As we look back on what we’ve talked about, all of these are codependent and interdependent on each other. The ecosystem is strong but delicate because there are so many pieces that feed each other and that we’re so intricately woven together that they think humanity is waking up to. We know if you’re a listener, you’re part of that. Let’s save the planet. Let’s try if we can preserve it not only because it’s so beautiful, but also because we all live here and our lives sort of depend on it. So, hoping that fellow nature freaks out there as we talk about water, as we talk about animals, as we talk about mountains, as we talk about trees, as we talk about the beauty and majesty of nature, that we all do our own part to try to help preserve it for generations to come.
Kay:
We’ve had so much fun getting to geek out and freak out here on nature week. We absolutely love nature. We hope that you do too, and we hope that you come over on into the Facebook group. Let us know what portion of nature do you love? How do you support it and how can we support it too in the way that you do as well? We’ve enjoyed this week here on the Kay & Shi Show. Thanks, everyone.
Shi:
Thanks for tuning in. We’re in your corner and we’re rooting for you.
