MITCHELL COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) -- As portions of western North Carolina open back up for tourists, others will need months if not years to welcome people once again. The swelling water of the North Toe River took so much from so many in Mitchell County. The natural beauty of swimming holes, tree-lined streams and winding pathways are all gone.  The night Helene hit, Christy Thrift, the owner of NC Outdoor Adventures, watched the water rise 30 to 50 feet from a neighbor's yard. "We saw the house float by, and my husband and I both paused and said, 'Oh, my God. I recognize that house' ... and we were like, 'Oh, my gosh. That's Lenny's house,'" Thrift said. The only thing left of her neighbor, a gifted musician, is his stone chimney. "We have a ton of people displaced, and we still have a ton of people missing," Thrift said. For the people whose homes are still standing from Red Hill to Green Mountain, their belongings sit waterlogged and mud-covered in their front yards. The storm also shut down anyone's ability to make money. "It's not just here that we lost our business. We lost our business along any and all rivers that we operate on," Thrift said. "This year, we brought in 1,500 people just for tubing." Thrift and her husband relocated their business to Red Hill in 2017. She established a quite secluded tubing route for people. Now, piles of trees, clothing and cars sit along the banks of the river. They are all hazards for inflatable tubes and people. In one section where Thrift used to take people white water rafting, an entire section of train tracks sits in the middle of the rapids. "Everyone keeps saying, 'We want to see the new river.' Because every river in western North Carolina is new now, you have to relearn it. We knew every rock. We knew every eddy, every rapid. They're all different," Thrift said. The river also isn't clean. It's full of debris and runoff from local farms, mines and an overloaded sewage system. "When we first started, we were making $30,000 to almost $100,000 a year. We're not going to make that, and if we can't open, you know insurance is $3,000, so I'm not going to insure our business if it's not even open," Thrift said. Thrift and her other neighbors have taken on a new grim job. "I was given body bags at the beginning of this entire thing," Thrift said. "We're looking for pieces, so when we're sifting through debris piles ... doing search and recovery, you're not sifting through necessarily for a whole body. You're looking for parts. You're looking for outfits. You're looking for shoes, things that a person would have been wearing." Weeks after Helene hit, you can still find soldiers in the Army combing piles of debris, volunteers searching the river, and National Guard members directing traffic. Orange spray paint or ribbons on piles of debris show where those crews have already looked. In between crumbled bridges, obliterated storefronts and piles of destruction, there are signs of hope. "We trust each other. That's the key. A lot of folks up here aren't as trusting at first, but I think we've all learned that trust. I think we've formed a bond that's unbreakable," Thrift said. Thrift says there's always hope, but there's also resilience among the people who love these mountains. They'll find peace in the river again. "After the storm ... I had this fleeting thought of ... 'It's never going to be the same. We should leave,'" Thrift said. "It was fleeting."