It rains in Mayo

The Bog

I have an early memory of being with my grandfather on the way to the bog on his Ass and cart. I vividly remember the landscape. My grandfather didn’t have a car. He had no need for one. He would get a lift from a neighbour or cyle to go for a pint in Cannings in Ballyvary or Paddy Morans in Castlebar. The rest of the time, he farmed the land with my Grandmother Bridget. 

His name was Tommy. I am named after him. My fathers siblings all emigrated to various parts of England for work, including himself. My father decided to return home in the mid 80s. In 1986 he cut a lot of turf to warm the house for the winter. He cut too much. It was a bad year. Brutal. I remember turf floating on the water in the bog and lots of shouting. In August of that summer my grandfather died, 6 months after his wife, Bridget. A brutal year indeed for my father. 

The bog wasn’t a place I thought I would ever warm to. But, today it is a place to often yearn to be. Middle age is strange. The midges are still the evil fuckers they once were though.

Today, it is the colours, the plants, the lines in the bog formed by past generations as they dug peat to warm their homes. Tough work, but essential. I was 13 when I moved to Mayo full time. My mind had been turned by music and the modern world. Oil was available to heat the house, although probably causing land in oil rich countries to be ripped apart by greed and geopolitics. 

Any time I walk in the bog, I acknowledge the people gone by. To not do so would be a sin in my eyes.

I often find myself in Dublin listening to talk of rewetting bogs to sequester carbon from the atmosphere. I wonder what will happen to those lines, deeply etched in the bog to access the dark peat. The echoes of those strong people, the bottles of tea, ham in thick cuts of bread, the stories, the names attached to where they worked. Will they be lost forever, or will they be allowed to be remembered. I hope the latter. In fact, I feel I should fight for it, being a UCD student and all.  

They are my ancestors, along with my neighbours. They survived the most brutal of times, so I can be here with my notions, taking photographs and noting plant species in latin no less. Today can be a brutal lonely place for many. The instant availability of news and information, good and bad, can overload us. For me anyway.

Perhaps the bog roads will be populated by walkers and cyclists, who need that atmosphere that only a bog can offer. Large areas wet once again that will attract wildlife. 

I recently visited Lough Boora which is a large scale peatland restoration in County Offally. I cycled and studied the sculpture trail. It was impressive. 

Tommy, Bridget and hundreds of thousands of others did what they had to do to survive and turf was essential to that. 

We can do the same.

That excites me. 

Thomas Reaney

August 11 2026