Nature is Deaf. It does not speak human words. We understand it by observing its actions. Its language is visual.
This is the reason why it is so difficult to build a relationship with it. We build relationships with people we can talk to, with those who benefit us and us them. Ideally, we know them by their stories. Nature does not have those qualities inherently. It can feel like a one-way relatonship with it sometimes, until we go deeper and understand how much we are all connected.
This also explains why it is so easy to ignore the less bright and less loud parts of nature. Trees that are all green, grasses that are too small. Only to find out that these silent beings serve a lot in the ecosystem.
The natural world talks by simply being itself. It speaks by moving, doing what it has to do.
It seems then that the natural sciences is the language through which we can uncover these stories. A jump-off point for conversing with the natural world. Through science, we observe plants, animals, rocks, soil—all non-speaking entities—to understand where they come from, what they want, where they are going. They talk through their actions, through non-human sounds, and we interpret them by deducing the patterns they create.
But the natural world does not understand the language of man. It does not understand poetry. It only understands the language of action.
You can talk about conserving nature nonstop, but nature won’t understand you until you strike a stick to the ground to support a dying plant. Nature talks through actions, listens through actions.