What is the Verb?

When we look at our relationship with nature, understanding ourselves as nature, what is the verb that comes to mind?

“So what is the verb?” my friend Sharon looked at me as though it was the obvious question and I realized I didn’t have an answer. 

I’d been telling her why I thought this book was needed. Our relationship to nature is broken. We treat it as a resource to exploit, or somewhat better a resource to manage, and at best in most of our conversation, something to conserve. 

So what is the verb that best fits reclaiming an understanding of our place in nature? Is there a verb? 

One of the biggest shifts in my thinking over the past few years has been around the idea that instead of being separate from nature, we humans are nature. We’ve largely lost this understanding of ourselves. We can no longer see the desire to build and furnish a house for our children as analogous to the bird that carefully weaves its nest and lines it with bits of soft fluff and feathers plucked from its own breast. We look at our cities and see them as wholly separate from nature, city often being thought of as the opp…