John and Sue Leighton are members of the Quiet Lakes Association and live on the north side of Teal Lake off of Upper A and Boersma. While Sue’s numerous interests are significant, and we hope to publish them at a later date, today’s profile is on John. For those of us who know John well, we call him the “World’s Most Interesting Man” because it seems there’s nothing he hasn’t done. For example:
·
Age 5: John had just taken a kindergarten class on “pioneers”
and decided that he wanted to be a pioneer.
So, he proceeded to take a tarp from the garage at the family cabin, and
told his folks he was going to camp out for a while. Later that night as darkness arrived, his
folks and their friends were taking bets on how long he’d be out when they saw
a light approaching. As the bets begin
to pay off, John informs them he was only coming back for some toilet paper and
then went back out for a few nights.
Never bet against John Leighton…………
·
Age 9: John decided that he wanted to go to the
family cabin one Saturday. He thus
packed up his bike and planned to ride the 60 miles alone from Minneapolis. Although he got lost and found himself in
Brooklyn Center and 10 miles out of the way, he successfully navigated himself
back on track and arrived in time for dinner.
·
Age 12: John
acquired his first sailboat which he raced in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin in
the Inland Lakes’ Yacht Association regattas; capturing several championship
trophies. John also bought his first
canoe. His parents would drop him off at Lake Mille Lacs where he would canoe
down the Rum River; camping out overnight.
·
Age 15: John and his brother, age 12, decided to
canoe the Boundary Waters for a few weeks since John had received his license
to drive a car a week earlier. A few
days into the trip, their canoe was swamped and they lost all their
supplies. Thus, they had to live off
the land for 10 days eating fish, grouse, and rabbits until
they found some campers to help re-provision them.
·
Age
17: John and his brother, age 14, canoed over
1,400 miles to Hudson Bay over a 7 week period through unmapped wilderness.
·
20’s: After graduating from the William
Mitchell College of Law and marrying his college sweetheart, Sue, they had three
wonderful daughters. John actively
engaged in the real estate business and practice of law in the Twin Cities. Meanwhile, John played soccer for a German
team in the Minnesota State League.
·
30’s: John was spear fishing off the coast of
Washington at a depth of 80 feet when he speared a lingcod. Unfortunately, the lingcod dragged him into
a kelp bed tangling them both in kelp and spear tether. John had not noticed that his tank had been
leaking air from a split o-ring. Tangled, John breathed the last breath of air.
Rather than losing the fish, John simply held his breath for a few minutes,
untangled, and slowly guided the lingcod to the surface by grabbing both ends
of the spear protruding through the fish, pointing upward and letting the fish
do the work; careful to exhale and rise no faster than the smallest bubbles.
John built a fishing boat and fished gill
nets under a commercial license off the north shore of Lake Superior. He never
sold a fish; he gave them all to residents along the shore. He was simply
interested in how commercial fishing was done. John was also an avid hunter;
running pointing dogs on upland game. He has guided hunters, and has judged
hunt trials such as the National Pheasant Championship.
·
40’s: John and Sue kept a 26 foot sailboat
moored in the Bayfield area and did extensive sailing and navigating of Lake
Superior. They encountered too many
storms to think about: they were once hit by lightning which knocked out all
electronics and put 54 holes through the hull; they once had a tornado pass
within 100 yards.
Every year for two weeks to a month John and his cousin
sailed parts of the Pacific Northwest from Oregon to Alaska; sometimes racing,
sometimes living off the sea.
See the picture at left where John is holding a Pudget Sound King Crab in one hand and an Abalone in the other. On one occassion their navigation system faulted, thus resulting in them running aground on a sand bar approximately 20 miles from Alaska (see below). 
With 20 foot vertical tidal movements daily, they were forced to request assistance from the Coast Guard.
John has run over 50 marathons, and over 50
races in excess of 50 miles including 10 mountain races of 100 miles. John has
run the Western States 100 from Squaw Valley to Auburn 5 times, and he has run the
100-mile run at over 10,000 feet in Leadville, Colorado. John has climbed many
of the 14’ers of Colorado where he was caught in electric storms various times.
John set up a complete woodworking shop in
his basement where he designed and built much of the cabinetry and furniture
for his home. He especially liked working with French Provincial design.
·
50’s: John has skied the Birkie 27 times and
has skied every Worldloppet race in Europe; earning the status of Worldloppet
Master Skier. In 1999, John and Sue
purchased their cabin on Teal Lake because of the world class ski trails in the
Hayward/Cable area. The Fat Tire Race on the Birkie Trail introduced John to
mountain biking.
·
60’s: After moving to Teal Lake John fell in love
with mountain biking and has dedicated himself to building single track biking
trails, mainly in the areas just north of the Quiet Lakes between 206 and
County Road M, i.e., the Wilson Lake, Patsy Lake, Rock Lake and Namakagon
Trails. These trails (see picture at left) recently won the International
Mountain Biking Association’s “EPIC Trail Designation” for quality, the only
trail with such designation in the Midwest.
John was the Minnesota State Mountain Bike Champion in the “50 &
Over” category for four straight years.
John is a published poet, with his current book of poetry, Paradise View
Collected Poems, on sale at Redbery Books in Cable. John has also written an instructional
booklet entitled “Finding the Rhythm of the Trail” wherein he compares mountain
biking to dancing and being “at one with the bike”. This booklet is available on the CAMBA web
site.
Today: John continues to build bike trails, is currently
an active member of the board of directors for both the Birkie Foundation and
CAMBA (Chequamegon Area Mountain Biking Association) and is an avid gardener
(see his wonderful gardens at left). After
any storm, you can always see John heading for the forest with his chainsaw in
his backpack to clear the thirty five miles of trail for which he is trail
steward.
John’s greatest concern today is staying in
shape so he can keep up with his five grandchildren. You may have seen him dive
with them off a tower he built on the bow of his pontoon boat last summer.
And of all the memories briefly and
incompletely catalogued here, John’s most significant and rewarding adventure
was his marriage to Sue, to which he provides this poem:
When You Are Older: for Sue
When you are older than your years and
keep nodding by the fire,
Take down my book and slowly read, and dream,
And make a
joke about how my poems need some censorship
How many of them loved your moments
graced
And loved your beauty with love old or
new
Not one wrong wish for faceless face
value
Nor sorrows of your ever-changing face
Then bending down beside the glowing
embers
Murmur, a little sadly, how love led us both, together, to the watershed
Dividing what is past but remembered
