Discarding the shooting script provided by Life Magazine for the "Country Doctor" story, Smith spent 23 days in Kremmling, Colorado, a small town of 1000, documenting in over 200 photographs, the work of Dr. Ernest Ceriani. Ceriani describes the making of this image: There is a little path that led from where I lived to the hospital across an intersection. It was a shortcut through these weeds I would take sometimes to save a little time. He (Smith) and I traveled that path any number of times. After a couple of weeks, he mentioned he'd like a shot of me carrying a bag, which I often did. He said I should not be surprised if he were laying in the weeds, waiting for me to come by. Whether he picked that stormy day by design or by chance, I can't say.

The Life picture editor, Maitland Edey, tells why this image was selected as the opener of the essay: At first glance, it says little: a man carrying a bag. But the man is preoccupied. He walks through weeds and past the corner of an unpainted board fence. Clearly this is a poor rural community. The weight of his responsibility to that community is conveyed by his expression of worried concentration: a narrow and specific shaft of emotion, appropriate to the immediate needs of the story. But behind it, on a larger scale, loom the pain and disaster, the ultimate death that waits for us all, sensed in the lowering cloud that hangs over the doctor whose days are spent dealing with such things.(citing Great Photographic Essays from Life, Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978, p. 64).

Smith was known to have worked diligently building depth into his prints and perfecting his ability to make copy prints. Many of his most well-known images have only been available in copy form, many then trimmed to obliterate evidence of the copying process and only in rare instances signed, as is the case with this and the following lot.