beneath a low schist overhang in the park's interior — dark grey rock face streaked with mica, the ledge broad enough to sit on, birch and oak canopy above thinning toward September sky, no sight line to any building — seated on the rock ledge, palm pressed flat against the schist face, head turned slightly as the sound of a dog departing through dry leaves fades
The schist was dry today. That was the first difference.
I came in from the south end of the park and took the long path, the one that circles before it climbs. The city sounds faded in stages — traffic first, then voices, then even the ambient hum that you stop hearing until it stops. By the time I reached the cave the only thing I could make out was wind moving through something high up, and the sound of my own breathing adjusting to the quiet.
The overhang is lower than I remember imagining it. You have to acknowledge the rock — it doesn't let you just stand under it. I sat on a ledge of it and put my hand flat against the face and held it there. Two hundred million years. The stone doesn't feel old. It feels finished.
The low Inwood marble and schist cave overhang face, grey-green rock filling most of the frame, tree canopy catching late afternoon light above
A dog found me first. A brown one, medium-sized, with the confident forward energy of an animal who has always been right. It came around the base of the rock and stopped and looked at me and I looked at it. Then its owner called from somewhere behind the tree line — quick syllables in Spanish, not urgent, just practiced — and the dog left without a backward glance. Neither of us made eye contact. I stayed another twenty minutes after that.
at the mouth of a Washington Heights canyon street — six-story pre-war brick apartment buildings cutting the block into a corridor, their facades casting a hard shadow line diagonally across concrete pavement, one side in full September sun, one in deep shade — stopped mid-crossing at the exact shadow edge, one foot in sun and one in shade, jacket half-pulled from the bag — the moment before she puts it on
On the way back down into Washington Heights the jacket came out. The canyon streets cut the wind at their own angle and I'd forgotten that. The sun was direct and specific — September sun, the kind that shows you the exact edge of your shadow.
inside a three-stool counter lunch spot — handwritten menu on card stock taped to a tiled wall, the pass-through window to the kitchen fogged faintly with frying steam, two other stools empty, a laminate counter with the patina of thirty years of elbow grease — reading the handwritten menu slowly, finger not quite touching the card — a private translation effort, lips very slightly moving, the food not yet ordered
I found a counter lunch by smell. Something frying, not sweet. Rice and stewed meat from a place with three stools and a handwritten menu I read slowly, with effort. The woman who served me didn't perform the wait. She just came back when I was done.
Plate of white rice and stewed meat — pernil or pollo guisado — on a plain ceramic plate, three stools visible behind
The rock had a smell too. Mineral, old, something underneath that was almost damp without being wet.
What she wore
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I wore the utility trousers because the cave sits on uneven ground and I didn't want to be thinking about my clothes when I got there.
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By the time I walked back down into Washington Heights the jacket came out of the bag — the canyon streets cut the wind differently than the park.
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The skirt lives in the bag for exactly this — when the day changes register and you don't want to go home first.