The field has gone fallow, full now of long grasses and the delicate lace spray of green fennel. In the summer this path will be thick with the smell of black licorice, but now all I can smell though my mask is eucalyptus from the tree overhead.

In this plague year, we have abandoned every precautions, opened every door, thrown off every mask. We are tired of living wary, tired of constant vigilance. Have we not earned a break? Are we not due a respite? The world cannot not be so cruel.

Lot of plants look like fennel, apparently; carrots and hemlock most notably. Every year there’s a few stories about a forager who’s poisoned himself or his family eating the white carrots he pulled from the forest. Unearned confidence is deadly.