Reed City in the fall

Everybody does Reed City in August, when the Great American Crossroads Celebration takes the downtown and the two rail-trails run thick with rented bikes and kids who have never shifted a gear. Fine. Good weekend. But the maples do not turn until the banners come down and the coolers get put away — and by then most people have written the season off. They are wrong. It has barely started.

Here is what the town is, if you have never come. Reed City calls itself Michigan’s Crossroads, and for once the slogan is load-bearing. The Fred Meijer White Pine Trail — 92 miles of pavement from Comstock Park up to Cadillac, the longest paved rail-trail in the state — crosses the 55-mile Pere Marquette State Trail right downtown, at a rebuilt replica of the depot that made the place a railroad town to begin with. Two old rail lines, one intersection. The rest of the year Reed City is a quiet dot on US-131 with a good diner and a hardware store. In October that intersection is the best seat in Osceola County, and it costs nothing.

You can ride out of town in three directions without touching a car. South, the White Pine points at Grand Rapids down a flat, shaded corridor that used to carry freight. North, it runs to Cadillac. East, the paved Pere Marquette heads out toward Clare through hardwoods that in October look like somebody set them alight. Nobody rides the whole thing. That is not the point. Go as far as your legs and the light allow, turn around at a bridge you like, and be back before dark.

Color runs on a schedule you can nearly set a watch by. West Michigan peaks the second and third weeks of October, and Reed City sits a notch north of that, so aim for mid-month and be ready to move if a hard wind comes early. The maples go first — orange, then a red that looks lit from behind. The oaks hold out. They hang rust-brown and stubborn into November, long after the crowds have quit on the whole idea. Mornings smell like wet leaves and cold iron off the old rail bed. Sound carries a long way in the cold. You will hear one cyclist’s freewheel ticking a quarter mile off before you see anyone.

Start at the covered bridge. It is a real one — 151 feet, built in 2000 on top of an old railroad truss, carrying the White Pine Trail over the Hersey River — and in fall the water underneath goes clear and hard and loud. Walk it slow. Then pick up the Linear Park path, the Purple Heart Trail, which follows the Hersey between Rambadt and Westerburg parks and drops you to the water at a half-dozen points, including the footbridge everyone calls the Little Mac. The Hersey is a Muskegon River tributary — cold, quick, trout water — and October is when it stops being a place to swim and goes back to being a river. We wrote all of this up in our piece on the Crossroads trails, and again in the one on the Hersey. Read those. Then come see whether we oversold it.

If you are the stubborn kind, Rambadt Park keeps a small campground going — 13 sites with electric and water, showers that run warm. In mid-October that is a cold, honest night under trees that are dropping on your tent. Some people love it. Most book a bed instead, and one of our Michigan chalet rentals, Hersey River Retreat, is a few minutes from the trailhead at the east end of Upton Street, which matters more than it sounds like it should when your hands stop working at dusk and all you want is a hot shower and a door that latches.

Bring layers you can shed by noon, a headlamp because the trail has no lights and the dark arrives near six, and more patience with the weather than you think you need. October here does not negotiate. One day is sixty and gold. The next is a gray drizzle that soaks the leaves flat to the pavement and turns the whole town the color of a nickel. Both are worth the drive. Pack for both.

The festival will be back next August. So will the crowds.

Come now. Bring the coat.