Private Lives: Personal essays on the news of the world and the news of our lives.

It’s not yet 4 a.m. and I’m out walking at a healthy clip. The moon is bright. In the distance, a subway train toots its horn, breaking the silence. A pair of ducks waddle through the mist across my path. Rounding the bend, I detect movement among the trees and notice a shadow lurching. I quicken my step, but then stop to see two large raccoons locked in a mating embrace. They give me a startled stare but then get back to business.

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Welcome to Central Park after hours — after so many hours that it’s that pause between night and day when most of the partyers and carousers are gone, but before the dawn’s rush of cyclists, joggers and dog walkers.

I’ve been coming here since last spring, when a herniated disk forced me off the stationary bike in our living room. The best I can do now is walk — and walk — at an Olympian pace. To cover the 11 miles I need to rev my heart rate, stretch and return home to make sure my wife, dog and teenage son are awake, I like to get out by around 3:45, when even our overnight doorman barely budges. I head to the park’s Great Lawn, which has a half-mile paved path around the fenced ball fields, perfect for pure movement and uninterrupted thought.

The police don’t like to see you out this early. The park is officially closed from 1 until 6 a.m., and I’ve been warned but not ticketed. “Don’t you know there are critters out here at night — including coyotes and owls?” one officer advised me. I would kill to see a coyote. It shows you how far the park has evolved over the years. When I took late-night runs in the 1980s, I was warned against drug dealers and murderers.

I have encountered my share of wildlife. That includes feral cats, low-flying Canada geese, mice, voles, bats and rats, who scurry near the benches and garbage containers. In my experience, the squirrels sleep in until 5:45, though you often hear them screeching in the darkness like jungle animals. The raccoons are shocking when you first come across them. Well-fed and humpbacked, they scale the fences with ease, and don’t flinch when you approach. In fact, they’ll glare at you with marbleized reflective eyes, a look that I can only interpret as, “You wanna piece of me?” A few years ago, concerned about a potential rabies outbreak, the parks department trapped, tagged and vaccinated some 70 of the park’s raccoons.

But I hardly ever see people. From where I enter the park at West 86th Street, I can go 90 minutes without encountering a single person, a strange sensation in a city where even the quietest tree-lined street has a steady flow of passers-by. It’s estimated that 40 million people visit the park annually; a 2011 Central Park Conservancy report calculated daily usage by 40,000, and up to 220,000 on a summer Sunday. The energy of so many visitors doing so many things is wonderful, but when there’s no one about — no skateboarders, Frisbee throwers, Rollerbladers, strollers, waffle eaters, runners, texters or talkers — the park is otherworldly. Walking past empty benches, weeping willows and canopied pathways illuminated by old-fashioned luminaire lamps is like being inside a still life.

Every now and then, there are couples appreciating the romance of the setting, as well as occasional drunks. One aviator climbed the fence and flew a drone in the outfield — I watched its red light rising and dropping like an elevator. Parks workers are sometimes out driving tractors and spraying the lawn, adding a rural feel to the place. In summer, hipsters march in with sleeping bags to grab an early spot in line for Shakespeare in the Park. I once saw a tall man in a cape and night-vision goggles whizzing by on a bike.

Am I courting danger? I hope not. There are emergency phones around the path and security cameras near park entrances. The lawn has excellent sight lines in all directions and your senses are hyperalert when it’s just you and the shadows. At least I’m at no risk of getting slammed by a cabdriver, bike messenger or restaurant delivery guy, a constant threat on the city’s streets.

Sometime after 5:30, the first regular signs of daytime emerge, like the silver-haired guy from Park Avenue checking his phone while his golden retriever sprawls on the ground nearby. Or the Geese Police, cruising slowly past the turtle pond in a station wagon cautioning that “working Border collies” are on board. Or the Spandex-clad boot campers, executing their awkward crabwalk on the path or their lunges while holding jugs of Poland Spring. After I make 16 laps in near total solitude, the lawn is suddenly popping; by the time I return with my schnauzer, it will be back to boulevard pace.

Like all early rising exercisers, I always feel satisfaction at having accomplished a full day’s workout before most people stumble out of bed. But in my Great Lawn phase, I feel as if I’ve traveled to a place few New Yorkers know, a sort of enchanted Brigadoon right in our midst that exists only at precious intervals — in my case, every 48 hours. Anything more often might trespass on the raccoons’ privacy.

Allan Ripp runs a press relations company in New York.