A Sunday alone in Fort Tryon Park is my new favorite kind of New York day, and I only discovered it this week, which feels like a scandal given I've lived here three years.
I took the A train all the way up to 190th Street. If you've never done it, go — you ride the elevator out of the station, which no one warns you about, and suddenly you're at the top of Manhattan surrounded by trees like you teleported out of the city entirely.
Fort Tryon Park sits up on a ridge in Washington Heights and it looks down over the Hudson at the Palisades on the Jersey side. There's a heather garden that was still blooming in October, stubborn and pink. There are old stone walls and winding paths and barely any noise.
I brought a book I didn't read. I brought a samosa from a place near the station that was somehow perfect. I sat on a bench and watched a very old couple walk very slowly and felt the specific peace of a Sunday alone in Fort Tryon Park with nowhere to be.
There's a loneliness I used to run from. Sunday loneliness, the kind that creeps in around 4pm when the week starts gathering on the horizon. I used to fill it with brunches I couldn't afford and people I half-liked.
Lately I've been learning to just sit in it. To take the A train somewhere green and let the quiet do its thing. There's a difference between being alone and being lonely, and up here on the ridge I finally felt it in my body instead of just knowing it as a sentence.
The light got long and gold over the river. A dog the size of a horse walked past and gave me a look of deep understanding. Someone's uncle was flying a kite badly and joyfully.
I took the A train back down into the noise feeling softer than I'd felt in weeks. Three years here and the city still keeps whole neighborhoods hidden, waiting for a Sunday you're finally quiet enough to find them.
Go north until the train comes out of the ground. Trust me.
Love,