Randall Wells is a newly-retired Professor of English & Speech at Coastal Carolina University. He directed the Horry County Oral History Project from 1989 until 2006 and serves on the Horry County Museum Foundation. In addition to books on the local area, he wrote a composition text, Stretch: Explore, Explain, Persuade (Prentice 1998). With family and friends, he has sliced the Waccamaw River with a paddle, furrowed it with skis, rowed exhausted against its wind-abetted current, run upon cypress knees in a disabled motorboat, floated down it by tube (splashing off a nearsighted snake), jumped into it from high and low, swum Beowulf-like to its invisible mud of midstream, explored its Brazilian-like tributaries, cast lines to its mocking fish, watched its floodwaters lap his stairs, seen its darkness render up a lively child to timely hands, and welcomed the new millennium under its canopy of branches and black-adorning stars.