In a lapse of utter un-Yankee vanity, I yearn for the bronze skin of summer. This snowy, chilly, gray month of January soaks into my bones. Part of me loves the feel of it, another part resents it settling in. I long for the toned arm muscles, the invincible sensation of a strong back. I want that “up-since-4:30-this-morning-and-still-going-strong” feeling that comes with the twilight of a summer’s evening.

My winter body is pasty-colored, weak and really rather pathetic. I want to turn it in, right now, for my summer self, tanned, strong, and a reflection of some decent level of physical activity that results from a growing season and hard – or at least consistent – outdoor labor.

Vanity, complete vanity, among the worst no-no’s interwoven in the fabric of my deep-rooted Yankee constitution. Oddly, my conscience is a tangle of what I think and what I think I should be thinking. My summer conscience hears a good friend: “You’re going to pay later on for all that time spent in the sun.” My winter conscience gives her voice a decisive shove to the dark abysses of my mind, that same part that stubbornly – perhaps ignorantly – causes me to balk at the use of sunscreen. “Bring on the sun,” my winter conscience roars. In fact, bring it all on, Mother Nature.

Yes, bring it on, I say. Despite my disgust with the poor angle and short duration of sunlight at this time of year, winter’s offering of snow is much appreciated. Nope, that snow couldn’t fall fast enough or deep enough for my liking. During a snowstorm, when the flakes are building and drifting up against the back door and in the picketed garden in my back yard, I check every few hours to see if a path should be broken. Donning an inadequate level of outdoor gear I race out the door, flinging and plowing snow with my extra-wide shovel here and there, telling myself I’ll be through later to do a better job.

During the daylight hours, after the storm has passed, I shovel like a woman possessed. I don’t even look ahead, I just focus on the fluffy white masses immediately in front of me. Dig, lift, heave. Dig, lift, heave. It’s a mantra of its own. A deliciously physical series of small movements that add up to a satisfyingly prim network of paths cut from, edged and paved with pure white snow. Dig, lift, heave: I’m alone in the world, battling the forces of nature embodied in each tiny, innocent flake.

And I’m winning!

Suddenly the mantra is interrupted.

“Mommy, you just threw a bunch of snow in the doorway to my igloo,” a small child chirps from somewhere in the yard. “Oh, really?” I say, storming over to the small white architectural endeavor, carving out an unreasonably wide door with my weapon of mass destruction in an effort to achieve redemption.

“OK, thanks, Mommy,” she says meekly, carefully filling in the gapping hole with the discarded snow so that the doorway is more to scale with her diminutive form.

“We need a snowblower,” my husband says after a morning of flinging white stuff.

“Are you out of your mind?” I screech. That’d be some shade of admitting defeat to Nature and I’m not about to do that. I calm myself several degrees and purr: “Honey, you’re too young and strong for that. It feels good to shovel snow for two hours, doesn’t it?”

The expression on his fatigued face, a weary-to-the-bone look, says, “I do not think this is fun.” But deep down inside, I just know he’s feeling the goodness of physical labor soaking into every fiber of his being. Or maybe not.

Maybe it’s just me. I like that feeling and in the winter, there’s just not enough of it. Shoveling snow and hauling wood in for the ever-hungry stove doesn’t nearly approximate the constant level of work around the farm in summer. Lawn mowing, garden tending, haying and even playing hard under the summer sun are much more intense. And welcome.

From somewhere in my mind’s compilation of summertime memories, comes the recollection of pushing the lawn mower through too-high, too-thick blades of grass. It’s July, perhaps, and excruciatingly hot. To fight off the heat, I’m trying to recall just exactly how uncomfortable winter’s cold is. I try to feel the crisp gusts of wind against my cheeks and the sting of tiny ice particles as they blast my skin. In the heat of July, that notion is quite abstract and difficult to conjure up.

The reverse isn’t true, however. Here, in what can be utter cold and bleakness of January, I can close my eyes and ever-so-slowly inhale a waft of that freshly cut grass. I can feel my feet step onto those cool cushiony blades. I feel my legs lunge behind the mower, shoving it over the pits and mounds in the yard. I can hear the blades zing across a rock. I can feel the buzz of the motor in my ears and feel my arms numb from the vibration of the machine.

I can feel that blessed sun soaking into my skin, tempting each cell with its power, and calling to me, joyously, “Work, work, work!”

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941, or e-mail them to dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.