When Julianne Marett attended a local geocaching event last year, she quickly noticed she was among one of the youngest participants there.
Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunting game in which players use specific coordinates to find cleverly hidden containers called geocaches, a hobby Marett first discovered through Girl Scouts.
Marett, 16, knew she wanted to get more people her age outside and interested in the hobby.
“I (wished) there was a club at the library, where I could talk to other people who also like it,” Marett told The Dispatch on Thursday. “I was like, ‘Well, I could just make one myself.’”
That’s exactly what she did. Now, Marett leads the Intro to Geocaching Club at Starkville Public Library, where she meets consistently with local preteens to introduce the different aspects of geocaching and how to get started. Leading the group has quickly become one of her favorite activities.
“Because I can see in real time everyone is smiling and having fun,” she said.
It’s that same instinct – to find the solution herself rather than waiting for one – that grouped Marett in with only 5% of Girl Scouts across the nation who qualified to receive the Gold Award, the organization’s highest honor and the equivalent of an Eagle Award for Boy Scouts.
Earning the reward requires roughly 80 hours of work and multiple reports for a project built around finding a lasting solution to a real-world problem. But it all begins with identifying a problem in the community, and for Marett, there was a clear front runner: kids and families aren’t spending enough time outdoors.
“(Being outdoors) is so much calmer and way less stressful than anything indoors,” she said. “… Since I like hiking so much, I knew I wanted to do something with that.”
So Marett began looking at different hiking trails across the Golden Triangle. She went on each hike herself, taking notes and photos along the way to document what hikers could realistically expect to find. She read different hiking guides to get a good feel for what information is useful and how to present it clearly.
From there, she created hiking backpacks for four local trails: the Woodpecker and Beaver Dam trails at Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee Wildlife Refuge, the Lakeside Trail at Choctaw Lake in Ackerman and the Bluff Trail at Plymouth Bluff Environmental Center in Columbus.
Each backpack is packed with everything a family might need to start a hike with confidence.
“It’s so much easier to understand what you’re getting into (on a hike) when there’s a picture and a nice, detailed description,” she said of the hiking guides.
“… We just thought the backpacks would be a great way to keep all the resources together,” she added. “So there’s a hiking guide in there, and then there’s some nature-themed activities, like a nature bingo for the kids and binoculars and a magnifying glass.”
Marett debuted the backpacks at the library earlier this month, hanging them on a wooden coat rack she made herself. Ever since then, she said the project has been a huge success. The library’s initial Facebook post announcing the backpacks alone garnered nearly 300 likes and was shared more than 50 times.
“I’ve been talking to librarians, and they say they’ve always been checked out,” she said.
But her work wasn’t quite finished. To qualify for the Gold Award, Marett had to complete a final report reflecting on the project and what she achieved through it. From then on, it was a waiting game. Marett said she checked her email at least three or four times a day, waiting anxiously to hear if she received the award.
“I was really happy (when the email arrived),” she said. “… I’d seen the older girls when I was younger earning it, so I finally got to do that myself.”
Emily Marett, Julianne’s mother, couldn’t have been happier to see her daughter win the award. From completing the project to leading the geocaching club, Emily said watching her daughter grow through the experience has been one of her favorite parts.
“It was really exciting to see how confident (she was) to talk about something that (she) felt like an expert in, and (she is),” Emily told The Dispatch on Thursday. “It just really, really made me proud.”
For Julianne, the experience reinforced how easy it is to be a part of solving a problem in her community, a lesson she learned early on in her Girl Scouts journey.
“It’s not as hard as you would think it would be,” she said. “There will be people that are really grateful that you did it.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
