Every September 11, one New York runner logs long miles through the city — a ritual that started in 2021 with an unplanned 13-miler from Chinatown, bleeding toe and all. It began as a way to think on the 20th anniversary of the attacks. Two years later came a first New York City Marathon, and this year, on the 25th anniversary, another long run before toeing the line again in November for the 26.2-mile tour of all five boroughs.
But the essay behind that routine is really about a different anniversary: the fall of 2001, when the writer was 22, fresh to a SoHo apartment and a first magazine job. What sticks in memory isn't just the ash, the missing-person flyers, or the queues to give blood. It's the weather. That November was the warmest New York had ever recorded — no proper cold, no snow, none of the scarf-and-cider reset that marks the season. The brisk mornings and first flurries never arrived.
Looking back, the writer reads that unseasonable stretch as an early signal of the climate crisis, years before it became impossible to ignore: floods in Nepal erasing centuries-old towns, heat domes settling over cities whose infrastructure was never built for 110 degrees, orange New York skies from wildfires burning a thousand miles away. The point lands via a radio interview with John Avlon, once Rudy Giuliani's chief speechwriter, who argued that the real lesson of 9/11 isn't the unity itself but how quickly it was squandered — and that we shouldn't need catastrophe to come together. The essay's answer to what we should rally around: the climate, which has been making its case for decades.
For travellers, the piece doubles as a reminder that the seasons we plan trips around are shifting. New York in autumn — marathon day, foliage upstate, sweater weather in Washington Square Park — is precisely the kind of dependable rhythm that's no longer guaranteed. The writer will still check the ten-day forecast obsessively before the November 1 race and pack a throwaway sweatshirt for the start, but has learned not to bet on a cold snap. Whether you're running 26.2 miles or just walking the city, the advice is the same: pack for the shoulder-season swing, not the calendar.