Salt

I was born on old Cape Cod on January 14, 1874. To a certain extent man is a reflection of his environment. It exerts an influence on his character and development that he cannot escape; He may not be aware of it. He may scoff at it. But it is there, working through his unconscious all through life. Especially is this true of the environment of his youth. If this has been spent in a fixed locality say the land of his birth, he is for better or worse a product of his native soil as other living things that spring from it.

~ from Now I Remember: the Autobiography of Thornton W. Burgess, Boston: Little Brown, 1969

It has been said that Cape Codders by birth rather than by adoption have salt In their hair, sand between their toes, and herring blood in their veins.... They are subject to fits of nostalgia for which there is no known cure.... In this there is something elementary, something of pounding surf, of shifting sands, the taste of salt on the lips, the flash of sun on distant dunes,k the mingled smells of marsh muck, salt hay and stranded fish....