This brings to mind a  excerpt written by Henry David Thoreau from
his book Walden:

"Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed
bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a
revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undisturbed
solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless
through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window,
or the noise of some traveler's wagon on the distant highway, I was
reminded of the lapse of time.  I grew those seasons like corn in the
night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would
have been.  They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much
over and above my usual allowance.  I realized what the Orientals mean
by contemplation and the forsaking of works."
 

.