Mowing toward a moment

The best part of mowing isn't the whole-body workout I get from pushing the mower up and around my hilly and curvy and highly irregular lawn,  or the joy of making neat geometric shapes on that lawn and watching those shapes get smaller and smaller as I push that big mower around and around, and it isn't even the feeling of satisfaction that comes from taming my overgrown jungle. No, the best part of mowing comes when I'm finally done for the day and I turn off the mower and pull out the earplugs and hear again the sounds of the wild world, the birds singing and bees buzzing and breeze whispering through the trees. I sit on the porch swigging cold water to replenish what I've sweated out from pushing that mower around and around my yard, and I listen to a sound high on my list of favorite sounds: the absence of mowing.