Abstract
How do adolescent girls interact with nature? Which affordances do they perceive and enact in nature-rich environments? Drawing on outdoor empirical research, which mobilised cultural probes, walking, and semi-structured interviews as key emplaced methodological devices, this article provides possible answers to the research questions, as well as further interrogations issued from our analysis. This study was part of the Field Guide project, developed in the Azorean Archipelago, within Terceira Island, by a multidisciplinary team involving the social, and natural sciences, and design-led researchers. Our research contributes to the field by developing new knowledge on the affordances of nature-rich environments for adolescents, in the context of informal environmental education and outdoor learning experiences. In this study, affordances are understood as ways along which the world comes into presence to human beings, providing contingently relational possibilities for interaction. The findings highlight that these teenagers’ experiences, of being in nature on their own, were potentially transformative, mostly shifting their initial fears and discomfort into enjoyment, well-being, and a higher sense of connection with more-than- human realms. They extend knowledge on adolescents’ ways of perceiving and interacting with nature, revealing previously unnoticed affordances, such as listen-ability, the affordances of the weather, and depictability.