Aggie Bonfire’s motto is simple: “We burn to build again.” 

The most important word in that phrase is the very first one. We the students, we the former students, we the Aggies, we are the ones who build, we are the ones who burn and we are the ones who remember why we do it.

We the Aggies brought Bonfire back when the university swept it under the rug after 1999. It took years, but it was students and former students who reincarnated this tradition. Bonfire was reborn a literal phoenix from the ashes; each year a new fire emerges, raising fiery wings over the ashes of its forefather. 

These ashes tell a story. They’re all that remains of an entire semester’s worth of blood, sweat and tears. They’re the logs, baling wire, torn grodes, flattened Brisk cans and dropped wire hooks that found their way into Stack before Burn. With each new fire, we add to the tapestry of memory and grit that keeps us going.

We the Aggies brought Bonfire back from the dead, and we the Aggies have stayed true to its original intent year after year. Contrary to the attempts of some of the Board of Regents, we did not allow our tradition to be subsumed by heavy-handed bloodsucker types or exploited to finance another Kyle Field renovation.

The university may continue to facilitate the memorial, but they lost their chance at Bonfire proper in 1999. No amount of pandering or bullying is going to incentivize us to hand it over willingly, something the board must have realized when they quietly shelved the idea and hoped we’d all forget about it.

Bonfire survives. We Aggies make it so.

Bonfire is one of the most diverse, most improbable families you’ll ever meet, but we are a family. Aggies from all majors, ages and walks of life donate thousands of man-hours to come together and make something incredible. For an entire semester, we give our weekends to the woods. For all of November, we give our evenings and early mornings to stack site. For Nov. 18, we give everything to be standing together at 2:42 a.m.

The love of this tradition and our commitment to it is what binds us together, uniting our differences with the burning desire.

Every year new desires are kindled as students step up, filling in the steel toes and pots of those who came before us and keeping the dream alive for those who will come after. We don’t do it for us — we do it for the 12, for the school we think so grand and for everyone who’s ever humped it to yell “Build the hell outta Bonfire.”

When I describe my time in Bonfire — the hundreds of hours, the blisters and bruises, the heat and the rain and the mud — to people who aren’t familiar with the org, I’m met with incredulity. “How much did they pay you?” is a question I get often, and one members are used to laughing off. More often, whoever I’m talking to will just look at me and ask one word: “Why?”

It’s a fair question. Why? Why do we sacrifice so much of our short time here at A&M to be outdoors doing brutal manual labor, all to build something that will be burned and done in one short night?

If you don’t know the answer to that, you’re not in Bonfire. As cliche as it sounds, from the outside looking in, you can’t understand it. And, try as I might, from the inside looking out, I can’t explain it.

Why do I love Bonfire? Because even though I haven’t been able to attend a single cut or stack shift this season, I know I could show up and be welcomed with open arms. I know that I and every other Aggie there are there for the same reason, sweating through 105-degree days and shivering through 40-degree nights to keep Bonfire alive. And that’s special, don’t you think?

We are Bonfire. We are the burning desire. We burn to build again.

Charis Adkins is an English senior and opinion editor for The Battalion.