A Phoned-In Podcast by Bill Chalmers
They said, “This land will never be the natural way it was,
so you can’t live as Grandpa did.”
But Peter Ivan does.
“You can’t know where the beaver were, where fox and rabbit hid,
so you can’t trap the olden way.”
But Peter Ivan did.
“You can’t guard a moose trail atop a brush-filled hill.
You’ll never catch a moose that way.”
But Peter Ivan will.
They said, “The Eskimo can’t live the life of nature’s man
in a world where whites take all the laws.”
But Peter Ivan can.
My dad, Bill Chalmers of Juneau, Alaska, was an English teacher, author, poet, football enthusiast, raconteur... a wonderful, warm, and giving person. Inspired by his locally-legendary answering machine messages, we gave him a phone number he could call to leave a message, a poem, or a story. Each call became an episode of this podcast. He died on September 30th, 2026, and these recordings are just a small refraction of the light that he leaves behind in all of our hearts. –- Devin Chalmers, October 2026