Beth Maynor Young's now famed photos have come to symbolize Cahaba River's vulnerability, diversity | al.com

Beth Maynor Young's now famed photos have come to symbolize Cahaba River's vulnerability, diversity | al.com: Twenty years ago, a former Southern Living photographer named Beth Maynor Young took a freelance assignment from the fledgling Cahaba River Society to shoot the then-little known, ghost-white lilies that bloom mid-river on the rocky shoals of the Cahaba in Bibb County.
Something about those pictures of the fragile flowers in the mist rising from blue water in the soft light of dawn helped change perceptions of the river and stimulate a drive to protect it.
Cahaba lilies, also known as the shoal spider lily, are rare, found in only a few scattered streams in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. In their beauty, their rarity and their vulnerability, the lilies have come to symbolize the river with its almost unparalleled diversity of life.