Low-Effort Escalator

Rolling across the driveway on a pizza box got me out of the street, but the noon sun on the asphalt was turning into a total heat trap. Pacing back up the front path looked like unnecessary sweating. Right next to the grass border, somebody had dropped a long, stiff wooden paint stirrer and an overturned empty flower saucer near the stone base of the birdbath. I didn't feel like hiking up the dirt slope, so I kicked a flat garden stone under one end of the stirrer, tilting it smoothly onto the birdbath ledge like an automated gangway. I walked straight up the clean incline without my sneakers touching a single muddy weed. Maximum elevation, zero hill-climbing.