A 24-year-old woman has decided to pull a Forrest Gump, and make her way across the country from San Francisco to NYC. Catherine Li tells MSNBC that she has a very specific reason why she is doing it: just cause. “I just boil it down to the short version: I just felt like walking. I just decided to click over to living in the actual moment instead of inventing all these fantastic fantasies for the future,” she said.
Unlike Forrest Gump however, Li is walking across the country, not running. It has taken her seven months and 3,000+ miles to get her to Pennsylvania. She's neither doing it to raise money nor to get views on her Tumblr—her guide is a tattered 52-page batch of directions printed off Google Maps, hand-bound with string. Li said she's been surprised by how supportive strangers have been: “People have given me a lot of support. They give me McDonald’s gift cards and insist I take them. One time I went into a store and found $20 just sitting in my cart outside. I have no idea who left it.”
Though she admits she has taken a few rides here and there along her way, she has been adamant about keeping herself committed to her goal, and finish her quest by walking into NYC: “One time, a policeman escorted me out of a certain area at night, but the next day I asked him to take me back to the same spot. I don’t want to cheat.”
For the record, Li has really made good time: it took Gump three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours to run across the country (for no particular reason). We can't wait to see how Li's beard looks at the end of her run.
