On Sunday I spent the whole day alone in Fort Tryon Park and it might have saved my week.
Here's the context. My roommate was out, my group chats were loud, and my brain felt like the L train at rush hour. So I did something radical. I put my phone on airplane mode and got on the A train going all the way up. Like, all the way. Past where most people bother to go.
Fort Tryon Park is in Washington Heights, up in the far north of Manhattan, and if you've never been, you're missing the best quiet in the city. It sits high above the Hudson. There are winding paths and old stone walls and gardens that look like someone airlifted them from Europe. The Cloisters museum is up there too.
I found a bench with a view of the river and the Palisades on the Jersey side and I just sat. No podcast. No scrolling. Just me and a paneer roll I'd packed and the sound of wind in trees that were just barely starting to turn.
A Sunday alone in Fort Tryon Park is my quiet rebellion against a city that is always asking you to hustle, produce, respond, attend. Up there nobody wants anything from you.
An old man was feeding pigeons. A couple was clearly on a first date and clearly nervous. A kid rolled down a hill screaming with joy. I felt like a benevolent side character in everyone's Sunday movie.
I thought about how in Ahmedabad I never sat still. There was always family, always noise, always somewhere to be. Learning to be alone and okay with it is something New York taught me, painfully, and then beautifully.
By the time the A train carried me back downtown I felt rinsed clean. Softer. Ready to be a person again.
If your head is loud, go north. Way north.
Sometimes the cure is a train ride and a tree.
Love,