Something Magical

Beth Maynor Young's photos
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/07/cahaba_lilies.html







'Something magical'

On a recent return to the river, Young recalled her first trip.

She camped on the bank of Caffee Creek in what is now refuge land. She rose with the morning light.

She paddled a canoe out to a patch of lilies and set up her tripod in a current of shallow water and began clicking away.

Then, there came that moment, when the sun began to lift the dew off the flowers, when the mist began to billow off the gurgling water.


Emma Tannenbaum/Birmingham News
Beth Maynor Young's photos of the Cahaba lily helped change perceptions of the Cahaba River and its assets.On a morning 20 years later, the same things happen. Fish break the surface of the water, mussels and snails are visible under the clear current. Dragonflies and the damsel flies hover. Water bugs skitter on the surface.
"Something magical happens here every day, whether we are here or not," Young said. "Ninety-eight percent of it is just showing up and being present when the magic happens."

She is modest about whatever role her pictures might have played.

"My job was to fall in love with the river, and that isn't hard. The people working to protect these places. They have the hard jobs."


See the story in the Birmingham News