Rewilding a Bog and Mindset in Ireland
February 6, 2026
It was on a bog in the middle of County Mayo, Ireland, where I had a profound realization that rewilding is a movement rooted in awareness and compassion. Walking across a bog soaked in moisture and emerging care, I was guided by Bettina and Georg Peterseil. They opened their home to a retreat I led called “Rewilding the Light Together,” where 15 people sought to rewild their spirits as they deepen their care for our Earth. This rewilding mindset supports resilience for people and for the land.
Nearly 40 years ago, Bettina and Georg, two city dwellers from Austria and Germany, found their way to this Irish landscape through intuition. Here, they discovered a place to heal both the soul and the land. They restored the flow of the water into a nearby Loch, cared for the soil, and planted more than 3,000 native plants and trees.
This land in Castlebar, Ireland, is part of a lake bog system. It is located near Mount Nephim to the north, the sacred mountain of Croagh Patrick to the south, and a gentle stream flowing through the hillside to Lough Rusheen. In this place, there is a sense of connection through the moist earth beneath my feet to the water flowing into a serene lake that reflects the clouds scudding above. The bog is now a protected, living landscape of mosses and heather, where grass and gorse thrive and share a palette of colors unique to this place. Birds can be heard throughout this area, where only 40 years ago, there were no trees or shrubs.
When the Peterseils arrived, the bog had been heavily used for several hundred years to grow potatoes and as a source of peat. It had been left dried, filled with peat hags — a sort of drained series of ridges that leaves the land lumpy and nearly barren for years. They found a way to rewild the land without knowing the science or the terminology, and without outside funding. They came to understand the spirit of the land through walking, listening, watching, learning, and caring for it deeply. They feel this is mutual care and believe that the bog has cared for them just as they have cared for the land.
On this small piece of land, a tenant farmer had built a little stone house, grown potatoes, and cut turf to get by. Then he left for North America. While he was gone, a neighbor took every stone from the vacant dwelling to build their own buildings, leaving nothing but devastated land.
Today, as I walked across this same land, I saw plantation forests spread in distant neighboring fields. These plantations of fast-growing conifers drain boglands, and then the plantation owners clear-cut when they harvest the timber, causing more damage to the soil. Human economy and rewilding in Ireland are in tension. For Georg and Bettina, it is a tension that has grown over the past few years. Neighbors lament that the plantation forests darken the landscape with dense planting. Georg notes, “The land needs the story to be witnessed, to be told, to be healed, and this healing then accelerates the rewilding process.”
The bog serves as a record of the area’s history; we observe the ridges and humps left from potato rows and turf cuttings. A bog provides healing by releasing and processing what is unhealthy, making space for wellness to emerge. The space to stop striving, let go of intellectual concepts, and embrace the feeling of being, awareness, and co-creation of a deeper reality. The Peterseil family understood that building their home in harmony with nature, working together with the Earth, was the way forward.
They built a home with their own hands-on labor. Using passive solar design, a composting toilet that turns waste into humus, and living lightly on the land, they created a space where they raised their children and now host creative retreats. By engaging with architects and ecological conservation students, their story has been shared repeatedly across many channels, from early articles on their living wild to prime-time television coverage. The Peterseils do not seek attention; they have lived with their intention, and others have noticed. Georg and Bettina are now learning the language of rewilding, and they are sharing their own story as well as their intuitive journey of rewilding this bog.
They had not realized that while the land healed and the sphagnum moss, native oak, beech, spruce, and yew grew, the health of the bog would also be restored. The Peterseils stopped drainage and turf cutting, and they created compost to restore the soil. Indeed, they have a significant compost pile and had not planned to import earthworms, which are essential for creating healthy soil. To their surprise, earthworms soon appeared in the compost on their own! In clumps of pink bodies, the worms turned the compost into new soil used for the gardens that support the homestead. Bettina says, “The humus toilet would transform waste into gold and serve the land and trees in the future. It was symbolic of transforming something dark into something beautiful, darkness into light.”
Rewilding the native oak, spruce, beech, holly, willow, and ash trees on this land continues to bring surprises and joy. The family keeps learning how the land responds during stronger storms with high winds and occasional wildfires. The bog is healing as water flows, ridges are healing, and plants, with their muted silver, red, and green, continue to flourish. The beauty of the bog has become a treasure of the community.
After more than 40 years on this land, Georg and Bettina are now entering a new chapter of their lives and contemplating what lies ahead on this journey with the land. They have deepened their connection to their inner wisdom, which has helped to guide their questions about how to continue living with quiet integrity alongside the Earth.
It is the very spirit of the land that merges with our human hope to belong to something greater than ourselves, inspiring both the people and the place. We came together to create “Rewilding the Light Together,” a retreat for those seeking deep, mutual Earth- and soul-care. As Georg reflected, “We can see now the connection between the rewilding of the land and the rewilding of our minds and our relationship to the Earth. It became clear that the healing of the Earth can’t be done by focusing on one detail — like CO2 — but by reconnecting to us, to the Earth, to nature and all life forms.”
All photos by Jeanne Marie Mudd.
Jeanne Marie Mudd works with non-profit and public sector organizations, writes, and leads retreats focused on rewilding where participants reconnect with the wild Light within and around us. This helps bring light to our relationship with the Earth and supports planetary rewilding. She serves on the Steering Committee of Quaker Earthcare Witness and is an Arizona delegation leader for the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
