This week we’re hearing from Zach Sarti of Anchorage. Zach is a salesman who moved to Alaska from Illinois.
SARTI: I’m a salesman, and I work for a national cellphone carrier. I’ve been here most of the time the company’s been here. I got here in December of 2014, so almost 3 years. I thought it was a great opportunity to start fresh and see a part of the world I’ve never seen before. I was from Illinois. I was living in the southern part of the state there and was working for the company and saw the opportunity to come up here.
I’d say people seem to be a little more outgoing [in Anchorage]. Want to see how you’re doing, genuinely care. You know like when somebody says, “How are you?” it seems like there is more of a genuine intent there. It doesn’t seem so busy here even though there are a lot of people here in Anchorage. There’s, you know, 300,000 plus people here and it still has the small town identity.
One time when I was staying in Homer, we stayed at a really nice bed and breakfast there for the weekend. And we were in a hot tub and saw two eagles fly up and perch on a tree. They started making noises and then eventually one of them dove down and pulled a lean cod right out of the spit there. Definitely only in Alaska.
At first I was nervous of moose. I’d hear stories of people being like, “Don’t get too close to ’em or they might charge you,” or something like that. I mean, not that I’ve gotten real up close and personal, but I’m not afraid of moose anymore. But yeah, we still keep an eye out for bears. We like to take a Bluetooth speaker with us, make a lot of noise and let ’em know we’re coming.
I do try to stay outdoorsy while I’m up here because I know that’s something that I can’t get back home, or quite as much. So much beauty to see in the state, and if you want to go see it, it’s there for you to go get. Whether it be here in Anchorage–you can be on a mountain 20 minutes outside of town. Or up towards Denali–see one of the biggest mountains in the world. There’s a lot of beauty to see and you really can see a lot of candid nature here, which is something to not take for granted.
