What Is Gish?

Learn about this crazy, charity focused scavenger hunt.

What Is Gish?

The first week of August, every year, GISHers around the world unite to perform random acts of kindness as they create art that celebrates the strange. While declaring “Death To Normalcy!” these GISHers strive to make the world a better place and have a little fun in the process.

GISH, the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt, is a week of mayhem, charity, unreasonable pain and suffering. GISHers greatly anticipate the hunt, spending much of the year looking forward to a week that is filled with happiness and heartache. Happiness is due to putting joy into the world, bringing awareness to important causes and fundraising for charitable causes. Heartache appears at about 2 AM while GISHers frantically build beautiful works of art from non-recyclable garbage while also trying to find a professional basketball player who is willing to go head-to-head in a milk-and-cookies dunking competition.

I began GISHing as a fun distraction to daily life. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Since then, it has become a year-round hobby. I find myself devolving more and more deeply into the chaos of GISHing. Luckily, I am not alone. My competitive team, Scrumtrulescent, is now a second family simply due to the fact that each of us are focused so completely on the hunt that we spend much of the year chatting and prepping for the week of mischief. It has served us well. We were declared winners of the hunt in 2018, which took us all on a curated, all-expenses paid vacation to New Zealand. We visited the hobbits in Isengard, jumped backward over waterfalls and learned a great deal about Maori culture.

Why do I bring this up now? Because this week is GISH week and it is worth checking out. You can enjoy the shenanigans from the sidelines, but in just 51 short weeks you can also join in on all of the pain and joy. It is a great distraction from real-world stress while amazingly being a reminder of the good we can all put into the atmosphere. While you are waiting to join GISH, you can practice by making portraits of the Spice Girls out of actual spice, bridal gowns from garbage bags or sending traffic cones to space. Try it. You might find that you will fall as deeply in love with GISH as I have.