The hilarious and poignant sequel of a doctor's earlyyears in practice in a rural mountain townDrawing from real-life experiences, this book continuesthe up-close-and-personal look at one man'stransformation into a compassionate family doctor.Favorite characters return, along with new and colorfulones, as Dr. Larimore learns that sometimes patients arethe best teachers. The classroom ranges from hospitalcorridors to smelly barns, to homely kitchens andmountain streams. Dr. Larimore's growing expertise asa wilderness physician--and his work with the SwainCounty Rescue Squad and the Maroon Devils footballteam--are put to the test as he strives to incorporate hisfaith into both his practice and his family life.Hilarious and poignant events--a suspicious and shadynew doctor, moonshine and bartering, and thedesperate search for the Larimores' lost son--enchantreaders and instill images of grace and joy, perseveranceand humility, and the enduring power of faith.

Map of Bryson City	p. 12
Summer
Dead Man Standing	p. 17
Eyes Wide Open	p. 25
Auspicious Accidents	p. 31
Answered Prayers	p. 38
Rotary Lunch	p. 53
Death by Emotion	p. 60
The Invitation	p. 72
Barbecue and Bacon	p. 78
A Touchy Subject	p. 86
Family Time	p. 90
Fall
Chicken Pops	p. 99
Swain County Football	p. 106
Hospital Politics	p. 112
The Bobcat Attacks	p. 120
Dungeons and Apples	p. 126
A Tale of Two Surgeons	p. 131
Tanned Feets	p. 140
Wise Counsel	p. 146
An Anniversary to Remember	p. 153
Winter
Mrs. Black Fox	p. 161
The Littlest Cherokee	p. 168
Christmas Firsts	p. 173
The Silver Torpedo	p. 184
Another New Year's Catch	p. 189
Turned Tables	p. 193
Doctor Dad	p. 198
The Phone Tap	p. 208
Spring
Labor Pains	p. 219
Staph and Staff	p. 225
The Ribbon Cutting	p. 230
Mountain Breakfast	p. 234
Walkingstick	p. 238
One Big Fish	p. 247
Memorial Day	p. 250
The Parade of the Century	p. 257
Lost Boy	p. 261
Facing the Music	p. 266
Another Summer
Flesh-eating Bacteria	p. 271
The Best Medicine	p. 277
The Blessing	p. 281
The Runaways	p. 285
Great Scott	p. 289
Miss Flame	p. 293
The Summons	p. 299
Distant Thunder	p. 307
Author's Notes	p. 311
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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Bryson City Seasons
Copyright © 2004 by Walt Larimore
This title is also available as a Zondervan audio product.
Visit www.zondervan.com/audiopages for more information.
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Larimore, Walter L.
Bryson City seasons : more tales of a doctor’s practice in the Smoky Mountains
/ Walt Larimore.
p. cm.
ISBN-10: 0-310-25672-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-25672-4
1. Larimore, Walter L. 2. Physicians—North Carolina—Bryson City—
Biography. 3. Medicine, Rural—North Carolina—Bryson City. I. Title.
R154.L267A3 2004
610'.92—dc22
2004012811
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible:
New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International
Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without
the prior permission of the publisher.
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680
Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.
Interior design by Michelle Espinoza
Map by Terry Workman
Printed in the United States of America
05 06 07 08 09 10 /? DCI/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
chapter one
DEAD MAN STANDING
It was one of those sweltering summer afternoons in the Smoky
Mountains that are unknown to outsiders and a distinct surprise
to first-time visitors—humid, sticky, and unyielding. The heavy air
lay over us as though it didn’t want us to even move.
“You didn’t tell me, Walt,” my bride of nine years complained.
We were heading toward our tenth wedding anniversary that fall,
and I had already begun scheming, behind her back, with the help
of our friend Sally Jenkins, to give Barb a bedroom makeover and
a special trip out of town.
“About what?” I asked, trying to feign innocence but suspecting
she had somehow found out about my shenanigans. One
thing that was almost impossible in Bryson City, North Carolina,
was having a secret remain a secret. Somehow news wafted
through our town as easily as mountain breezes.
“About this heat!” Barb exclaimed. “If I had known it was
going to be this hot in the mountains, I might have just stayed in
Durham and let you come up here by yourself!”
Barb turned to smile at me—one of those “you know I’m kidding”
smiles I loved. She turned back to face the mountains. “At
least I would have asked the hospital to put an air conditioner in
the house!”
We were sitting on the park bench we had placed in our backyard
when we moved to Bryson City, North Carolina, over a year
ago. It looked out over an exquisite view across Swain County
Recreational Park, then up and into Deep Creek Valley, and finally
over nearly endless ridges all the way to the most distant mountain
ridges—deep in Great Smoky Mountains National Park—that separated
North Carolina from Tennessee.
“Maybe I could call down to the Bryson City icehouse and
have them send over a block or two for us to sit on.”
“You mean that old building down by Shuler’s Produce next
to the river? It doesn’t look like it’s been open for years. How
about you go get us a glass of ice water?”
I nodded and ran into the house to get a glass for each of us—
being quiet so as not to wake up our napping children—and then
tiptoed to the back screen door and out to Barb.
The view was mesmerizing, and we had now seen it through
each of the four seasons—my first year as a practicing family physician—
since finishing my family medicine residency at Duke
University Medical Center.
“I didn’t know it would be this hot,” I commented. “But then
there were so many things we didn’t know about this place until
after we settled here, eh?”
Barb threw back her head and laughed. My, how I loved her
laughter!
“True enough!”
We both fell silent, reflecting on the beginning of our medical
practice here. I had left residency so full of myself. Indeed, I had
been very well trained—at least for the technical aspects of practicing
medicine. But when it came to small-town politics and jealousies,
the art of medicine, the heartbreak of making mistakes and
misdiagnoses—all piled on the difficulty of raising a young daughter
with cerebral palsy, dealing with one very strong-willed, colicky
little boy, and transitioning a big-city girl into a rural doctor’s
wife—well, the task was not only full of unexpected events, it was
downright daunting.
Barb turned her ear toward our house for a moment. I could tell
she was listening for the children. Kate and Scott were napping, so
we had the windows open—both to capture any passing breeze that
might happen along and to hear the children if they were to awaken.
My thoughts turned to our small hospital—a sixty-mile drive
west from the nearest medical center, which was in Asheville. In
the early 1980s, Swain County was still a slow, small, sheltered
mountain hamlet. Most of the folks were natives, as were their
parents and their parents’ parents. Most all of the physicians, and
the nurses for that matter, were in at least their third to fourth
decade of practice. They had their way of doing things and didn’t
“hanker to outsiders”—whom they called “flatlanders” if they
liked you, or “lowlanders” if they did not. They especially resisted
any “newfangled” ways. “Be careful if you say anything negative
about anyone, son,” Dr. Bill Mitchell, or Mitch as everyone called
him, warned me. “It’ll get back to them—and me—lickety-split.”
Rick Pyeritz, M.D., my medical partner and also a classmate
in our family medicine residency at Duke University Medical
Center, was on call this day for our practice and for the emergency
room. In Bryson City, the on-call doctor was on call for hospital
inpatients, the emergency room, the jail inmates of the Swain
County Sheriff’s Department and Bryson City Police Department,
the National Park Service, the coroner’s office, the local tourist
resorts and attractions, and the area rest home and nursing home.
The fact that one of us would cover all the venues in which medical
emergencies might occur made it very nice for the other six
physicians not on call that particular day.
“When the kids get up, how about we all take a stroll up Deep
Creek?” Barb asked.
“Sounds like a great idea!” Deep Creek was the southern
wilderness entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The creek was wide, tumbling, and ice-cold—a great place to go

Excerpted from Bryson City Seasons: More Tales of a Doctor's Practice in the Smoky Mountains by Walt Larimore
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