Hersey when the river cools

The tubers quit around Labor Day. Good. Everybody floats the Muskegon here in July — down the hill from the village, coolers lashed to the rafts, the water bathwater-warm and shoulder to shoulder by noon — and it is a fine way to lose an afternoon. I have lost a couple. It is not the season I would drive up for. Come when the river cools.

Hersey sits where two rivers meet. The Hersey River drops into the Muskegon right at the edge of the village, and that water power is the whole reason the place is here at all — the first grist and saw mill went in back in 1858. First village in Osceola County. First county seat, in 1869, though Reed City holds the courthouse now. What is left is a few hundred people and a Main Street you can walk end to end in the time it takes coffee to cool. In October it does the thing it cannot do in July. It goes quiet.

The color runs late here. This is central Lower Peninsula, not the UP, so the crowds chasing Marquette in the last days of September are a month early for Osceola County. The maples along the banks hold green-gold into the first week of October. The real turn — the week the whole river corridor lights and lets go at once — lands in the second and third week most years, give or take a hard frost. The oaks are stubborn. They go last, rust-brown, sometimes not until November.

That is what you drove up for. Wet leaves, cold mud, somebody’s woodstove two streets over throwing the first smoke of the season. By the third week the river fogs off its own surface on a cold morning, and you will see your breath before the sun clears the treeline. The current does most of the work now, and you can lay the paddle across your knees and let it. Fewer people on the banks. A heron that will not move for you.

Put in below the village and let it carry you. one of our Michigan cabin rentals, Golden Valley Retreat, has the water down the hill from the door — kayak, canoe, whatever floats — and the fall run is slower traffic and better company than the July float. Cold hands. Empty banks. I put the how and the where into a separate post on where the Hersey River meets the Muskegon, so I will not relitigate it here.

When you are off the water, walk the trail. The Pere Marquette State Trail puts a trailhead right in Hersey — 55 miles of old rail bed between Baldwin and Clare, and the paved stretch through Reed City and Evart on either side of you is flat enough for a bad knee or a road bike. In October it smells like the trees it cuts through. You will have most of it to yourself, which in July you would not.

Friday, the answer is the fish fry. River Junction, on Main Street, is the name people give you, and on a cold Friday in October it is where the village ends up.

Fishing is the other reason to be here now. The Muskegon carries smallmouth and pike, and as the water drops toward winter the lake-run brown trout push up through the fall. Check the USGS gauge on the Muskegon before you load the truck. A river in October runs 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 patience to be somewhere with nothing scheduled. Dry socks. A second dry pair. The Hersey page has the rest of what Hersey is and is not.

Leave July to the tubers. Come when the water runs cold and the banks empty out. Bring the coat.