After the dulcimers: Evart in October

The whole county shows up for the dulcimers. Third weekend of July, every year, the Osceola County Fairgrounds fills with people who drove in from Ohio and Ontario to pick and jam and sleep in their campers, and the sound of it — hammered dulcimer, fiddle, a hundred guitars a quarter-step out of tune with each other — carries across town for three days and most of three nights. Good weekend. I am not knocking it. It is just not the one I would book.

Come in October instead. After the campers pull out and the fairgrounds go back to being a field, the town does the thing it cannot afford to do in July, which is go quiet. And the Muskegon River — it runs straight through the middle of Evart, past Riverside Park on both banks — does what rivers do in the fall. It gets cold. It gets clear. It stops being warm bathwater for the tubers and turns into something with an opinion.

The color comes late here. This is central-Lower-Peninsula timing, not the Upper Peninsula, so the crowds who chase Marquette in the last days of September are a month early for Evart. The maples along the banks hold green-gold through the first week of October. The oaks are stubborn and go last, rust-brown, sometimes not until November. The real turn — the week the whole river corridor lights and drops at once — lands around the eighteenth most years, give or take a hard frost.

That is the smell you drove up for. Wet leaves and cold mud and somebody’s woodstove two streets over, the first fire of the season. By the third week the water fogs off its own surface on a cold morning, and you will see your breath before you see the sun clear the tree line. The fairgrounds are grass again. The campers are gone. On a Tuesday the loudest thing in town is a chainsaw somewhere getting a head start on winter.

Paddle it while you still can. J&J’s River Run sits downtown at 205 East 7th, and they will put you on the water in a canoe or a kayak — but understand the season. Their full-time hours end at Labor Day. After that it is by appointment, which means you call the number ahead (231-287-0008), you ask, and you do not just show up in a wetsuit expecting a shuttle. The fall river is slower traffic and better company than the July float. I put the how and the where into “Paddling the Muskegon near Evart,” so I will not relitigate it here. The short version: cold hands, empty banks, the current doing most of the work.

When you are off the water, walk the depot. The old rail station downtown got restored, and the Pere Marquette State Trail runs right through the middle of Evart — paved, flat, the Evart-to-Clare stretch smooth enough for a road bike or a bad knee. There is a lookout over the river worth the stop. In October the trail smells like the trees it cuts through, and you will have most of it to yourself, which in July you would not.

Fishing is the other reason to be here now. The reach from Evart down to Big Rapids is the top of the smallmouth water — rocky bottom, crawfish, the structure a smallmouth wants — and the river carries pike and trout on top of that. Fall is the run. Lake-run brown trout push up through October, steelhead in behind them as the water drops toward winter, and the banks that went shoulder-to-shoulder with tubers in July belong to four people in waders and a heron. Check the USGS gauge on the Muskegon at Evart before you drive up. A river in October can be low and bony or up and pushing, and the number tells you which before your feet do.

Bring layers, bring a thermos, and bring the tolerance to be somewhere with nothing scheduled. The diner does not take a reservation. The trail does not close. What you want is dry socks, a second dry pair, and the sense to quit before your hands do.

Book near the water. one of our Michigan log cabin rentals, Coyote Fire Retreat, puts you inside a walk of the river and the depot both, and it is on the Evart page with the rest of what Evart is and is not.

Go in October. Leave the dulcimers for July. Bring the coat.