“Spells”, as already pointed out, are just a mechanical tool to describe what the Ranger can do, and the legacy of being the Aragorn class. The Ranger archetype is many different things, but person who deals with nature spirits isn’t one of them. That would be a shaman.
If you want to say “the D&D Ranger needs so be something else”, then what it needs to be is not a spellcaster. Being a spirit dude is taking it in exactly the wrong direction.
Spells are an integral part of a Ranger for me. I see them in Tolkein's description of Aragorn and I see it in most of the D&D iterations. While they do describe what a Ranger can do, as an abstract in the D&D rule set it fits nicely. Drizzt does not fit well in my definition of a stereotype Ranger. Minsc does, Aragorn does, Robin Hood and Davey Crocket don't IMO. Robin Hood is a Rogue.
Aragorn does not deal with nature spirits, but then there are not any nature spirits to my understanding in TLOTR, or Fey for that matter. I think both of these would be core to my understanding of a Ranger if we moved them to the standard high-fantasy D&D world. Also, according to the Bree-Folk Rangers
"know things people should not know" (or something like that) and they are speaking of Ranger's generally when they say that, not Aragorn specifically.
IRL Ranger can mean two things I can think of: A park Ranger, who would be a non-combatant, or an elite special operations soldier, which would be a highly militant Rogue in D&D parlance.
IMO the D&D Ranger needs more Arcane magic, not less, to fit what I see as the prototype. While I think the number of spell slots as a half caster are ok, they need more choices to prepare than they have now. The Ranger should be more like a Gish and IMO it should be the default Gish class. Other subclasses can and do fill that Gish role, but the Ranger should be the class that fills it across the board. I think the class should be more about magic than about nature.
If you want a magic-free nature guy I would prefer a Rogue subclass fill that niche, if you want a high-magic nature guy a Druid can do that well. Ranger should be distinct from these.