I did the unthinkable for a person who works in fashion: I woke up early on purpose.
Took the A train all the way up, past 125th, past the parts of Manhattan tourists forget exist, up to Fort Tryon Park. It was barely 7:45. The car smelled like coffee and someone's construction lunch.
A summer morning in Fort Tryon Park is a completely different city. This far uptown, the air actually moves. You can see the Hudson doing its slow silver thing, and New Jersey looking almost pretty across the water, which I will deny saying.
It was all dog walkers and old men on benches and one very serious woman doing tai chi near the heather garden. Nobody was performing anything. Nobody was on a call pretending to be somewhere better.
I bought an iced coffee from a cart and sat on the stone wall by the Cloisters and just watched the light come up over the trees.
Here's what a summer morning in Fort Tryon Park taught me: this city is so loud about its nightlife that we forget it has a whole other personality before 9am. Softer. Kinder. Slightly hungover, maybe, but gentle with it.
I thought about how in Ahmedabad, mornings were the busiest time — the whole household awake, chai being made, the vegetable seller already calling from the lane. Here, mornings are the quiet hours. I still can't decide which version of morning is mine now. Maybe both.
I stayed too long. Was almost late to a 10am meeting downtown, sprinting for the A train with my coffee sweating through the cup.
Worth it. Every stop of the forty-minute ride back, worth it.
Go uptown before the city wakes up. It'll show you a side of itself it usually keeps hidden.
Love,