I got up early to walk on the road, and halfway up, a car pulled up, and rolled down it’s windows. “Hey, you’re the writer guy, aren’t you?” I nodded, said hello. The car rolled alongside me for awhile, and so I turned around and walked the other way and they hesitated, then drove on.

An hour later, I was food shopping and a woman came up and nodded, and said, “I just finished your book last night, and this is strange, to see you here, buying bananas.” No problem, I said, it happens all the time. And soon after that, I stopped into a local bookstore to buy books and a woman looked up at me, and said, “oh, this is weird. I was just thinking of buying your book.” Go for it, I thought.

And then, in Gardenworks buying cheese, a woman came up to me, and said, “we met five or six years ago, and I’m sure you remember me. I’m the one whose border collie died after getting hit by a car. I know you wouldn’t forget a thing like that.” I had no idea who she was.

People don’t know or forget E.B. White’s caution: “There are 10,000 of you but only one of me.”

On the way home, I stopped to take a photo of a barn, and the farmer came out and looked me over. “I’m a photographer,” I said. “I take photos of barns.”

“I know,” he said.

“And I write about rural life, and animals.”

He nodded. “Yup.”

“And I take photos of farms.”

He nodded, looked at my camera. “Yeah,” he said, “Ed Rouse said you’re probably be buy one day.”

Some things about being recognized are unnerving – people driving by the house, honking, getting out of their cars with their dogs, stopping by to visit while I’m working. Some things about it are fun.

The strangest feeling is the one of being observed all of the time. This isn’t a heavily populated area, and there aren’t a lot of people who do what I do and who look like me. And I know most of the people I run into, also. It isn’t a good or a bad thing to be known. It’s my life.