This study focused on the nature of young people's everyday outdoor refuging practices and places. Outdoor refuges are defined as “places that provide respite from everyday pressures.” Two primary aims guided the study. The first aim was to “confirm the importance of outdoor refuges by providing detailed accounts of how they are significant to young people.” The second aim was to “seek a deeper understanding of the ways in which outdoor refuging is practised among contemporary Danish youth.” While previous research documents the benefits of being in outdoor and natural environments, this study sought to develop critical insights into how young people use outdoor environments as places of refuge. “Places” are described in the context of this study as “knots tied from lines of movement” rather than as “containers of life.” The idea of knots tied to movement represents part of a theoretical framework proposed by Tim Ingold. Lines, meshwork, and wayfaring are other parts of Ingold's framework discussed in this article.
Twenty-one young people (age 14-15) participated in photo-elicited interviews. The photos were taken in advance by the participants and depicted outdoor places of significance that they visited on a regular basis. Such outdoor places included deserted gravel roads, systems of paths, secret treetops, empty playgrounds, and unattended schoolyards. The photos and related questions used during the interviews were designed to prompt discussions about different aspects of the young people's outdoor places and about how such places were used. The young people participated in the interviews in pairs. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Initial themes were developed through a data-driven coding process. These themes were then further analyzed in relation to Ingold's four concepts of Lines, Knot, Meshwork and Wayfaring.
Findings are presented in relation to two larger themes: (1) Becoming disentangled -- refuges as temporary knot-loosening and (2) Becoming entangled – refuges as multi-sensory knotting. As these two themes indicate, young people tended to use their outdoor refuges to simultaneously disentangle from distressing knots in their everyday lives and entangle themselves with the human and non-human environment. Entanglements with the non-human environment included emotional and sensorial connection to natural elements in the environment, including the sound of birds and the backrest of a tree branch. Entanglements with the human environment was by way of mobile phones, as participants used their phones while in their place of refuge to connect with friends and family.
This research calls attention to young people's need for spatial autonomy and outdoor refuges as a way to deal with pressures in their lives. An appropriate response from adults would be to provide opportunities for young people to explore and interact with nature-rich neighborhood environments in self-directed ways.
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