Once a month, I go to Manhattan on the train, just because. Because I can. Because I like Manhattan. Because I like adventures. I don’t have any specific destination in the city; I usually decide where I’m going once I have gotten off the train.

An adventure can be almost anything, and happen almost anywhere. It can include turning down a different street than my usual one, or it can be traveling across the world. A lot of my adventures these days do take place in Manhattan, because I don’t have a car, and a train ticket from Philadelphia is cheap if you buy it a few weeks in advance.

Today when I got to Penn Station, I headed toward the High Line at random, admired the immense statue of a pigeon, window-shopped in Hudson Yards, walked down the High Line some more to Chelsea, strolled through Chelsea Market in the old Nabisco factory, then sat in tiny Hudson River Park for a while to recover. Then I crossed over to Little Island.

I had seen Little Island a few months before, from the top of the nearby Whitney Museum, and I had made a mental note to look it up later on. It was funded by Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, and its foundations look like those squishy bulbs you use to irrigate a baby’s nose, a whole fleet of them all balancing on their tips like the legs of futuristic 1960s furniture.

The island is tethered to Manhattan by a couple of long walkways. Once you’re in the park itself, it gives no intimation of its Tim-Burton-esque underpinnings. It’s just a charming little park with an amphitheater facing the Hudson, a couple of decorative hills, and lots of stairs and winding pathways.

I labored along the pathways up to the top of the hill where there was a railing and a lookout; I attempted to sit down on a bench and tipped over instead, landing on my knees. A frail woman of about my age asked if I wanted some help. No one else asked. I got myself up, reassured her I hadn’t broken anything, and texted a couple of friends photos of the island so they would know.

There wasn’t much there to see from the top, really; skyscrapers, water, tour boats, a couple of sailboats, and far off, the Statue of Liberty.

I walked down again when I had assembled myself sufficiently. My hip hurt, my knee hurt, my skin was coursing with sweat, the cars and trucks were racing grimly past on the highway, and I was very, very pleased with myself, because I had had an adventure.