On a clear, sunny day in May, just a few weeks into the Smoky Mountain rafting season, Heather Ellis took a dozen people through the Pigeon River Gorge to celebrate its grand reopening, showing the rebounding of Appalachia’s tourism economy. She led them over and through roaring rapids with a practiced ease. “Forward!” she called. When the water rose, everyone heaved on their oar, ducking against the spray. The rubber float surged forward. “And relax.”

Ellis, bubbly and blonde and smiling behind an enormous pair of shades, is overjoyed to be back on the water after an uncertain winter. It has been nine months since Hurricane Helene ravaged central Appalachia, crumbling highways and roads, leveling forests, and reshaping rivers.

The Pigeon runs through Western North Carolina into the eastern end of Tennessee, roughly parallel to Interstate 40. When the river flooded after Helene, it took huge bites out of the highway, closing it for months and isolating small communities. Debris tumbled into the river, and the crews scrambling to make repairs have replaced sections of riverbank with concrete. Their efforts have been complicated by ongoing flooding and mudslide, creating new scars alongside the old.

 “The whole thing basically changed,” Ellis said, regarding the changes to the river and, with it, Appalachia’s tourism economy. “It moved major boulders and mountains.”

Ellis possesses an infectiously sunny outlook, even though things have been hard. She lost her home and most of her belongings to Helene and lives in a camper parked in the lot at work. She shares her uncertainty with many thousands of people, especially those who are paid to lead visitors into the beautiful places that make the Great Smoky Mountains so popular.

As many as 149,000 people in North Carolina alone draw a paycheck related in some way to outdoor recreation, and by one count the seven rivers of the southern Blue Ridge help sustain 68,000 jobs. The Pigeon River provides about $6 million in revenue annually to the rural counties along its banks, and some seven million people visit the French Broad, which flows through Asheville, each year. Rafting is second only to property taxes in the amount of money it brings to Cocke County, Tennessee.

Read the full article about Appalachia’s tourism economy by Katie Myers at Grist.