When everything is out of kilter — hugs and handshakes are out, masks and distancing are in — time in the woods can heal you.

After lunch on a shining blue day in May, I met three hiking friends at the cul-de-sac where Browns Hill Preserve begins. The goal: Targa Falls on Brodhead Creek.

The preserve is new enough that it has no sign, but the trail beyond a low-slung barrier is clear.

We head off walking the high ridge of conserved forestland between Cranberry and Brodhead creeks. A wet spring has left the trail more than a little messy, and an easy stretch of wide, grassy woods road quickly gives way to long, rutted puddles of rainwater. Through the trees, open water glints in large wetlands, and spongy sphagnum moss borders the trail. The footing is often rocky, and the forest floor is littered with the same blue shale in all directions. We breathe in the earthy, humus scent of leaves decaying in water.

Within a few minutes, we reach the boundary with Paradise Price Preserve and go right. In the afternoon light, the soft-focus vertical lines of leafless trees seem sketched in neutral watercolors. The forest floor is thick with fallen trees, glacier-dropped boulders and rock fields. The low, hazy green we see is all invasive barberry.

Water is coursing everywhere. Unnamed runs meander down from the wetlands. At the base of a tree we find a small, still pool that is 18 inches deep. As the trail heads steeply down, parts of it run with sandy spring water. Every drop — cold, clear, purified by the earth — is headed to the Brodhead Creek.

Crossing and recrossing on mossy stepping stones, we hear the roaring water getting closer, until the fresh mineral smell of rushing water hits us in the face. This is Targa Falls creating its own breeze.

Brodhead Creek is at its wide, handsome best today. In sparkling full flow, majestic, and caring nothing at all for the wonder, delight, and awe it inspires in us, it carries a watershed-worth of water drawn from miles of high ridges straight to the Delaware River. It will become healthy, pure drinking water for millions of people.

But the low sun is telling us it’s time to go. We’ve seen trout lilies, Quaker ladies, and violets in shades of yellow, white and lavender, many kinds of mosses and lichens, and false hellebore. Shadbush is in bloom, with spindly grey arms offering early bouquets. We startle at a small black rat snake as it disappears under a brush pile, rattling its tail.

I can’t take you on this hike right now, and that is a huge sorrow for me. But knowing that the creek flows and the waterfall roars, that nature rolls on and the woods are there, waiting — the bedrock truth of the natural world lifts me up.

More than anything, I miss seeing smiling human faces. Until I see yours on the trail again, I hope you’ll be safe, get outside, and feel nature lift you up, too.

Carol Hillestad of Cresco is a writer and hike leader for Get Outdoors Poconos, a free hike series administered by Brodhead Watershed Association.