Meet Islander John Grinter: a Trail Builder, Knife Sharpener, Fisherman, Golfer, and a Man with Many Passions

Long-time Islander John Grinter is something of a Renaissance man. He’s known in some circles as a trail blazer, having helped build scores of trails throughout the island and for being a staunch advocate for non-motorized transportation.

But he’s also a businessman, with his own knife sharpening entity, a musician, who plays a mean set of drums, a boater, who enjoys exploring parts of the Everglades and the intercoastal waterways in his native Florida, and a fisherman, who casts his lines in local waters as well as those on the East Coast. But those activities are not all that keeps Grinter’s internal motor running. He’s also an accomplished photographer, whose pictures have graced the covers of ski and nature magazines, and an avid snowboarder, who’s not afraid to take on the steep slopes of Mount Baker or the rugged terrain of Whistler Mountain.

In his more formative years, Grinter spent time as an Alaskan commercial fishing boat captain, and a naturalist and guide, who once took former Presidential candidate Ross Perot inner tubing at high speed “behind a skiff in Alaska’s inside passage on a tube shaped like John Glenn’s Mercury Space Capsule.”

If that wasn’t enough fun, you can sometimes spot Grinter out on the local links playing golf. He’s shot two holes in one in his life. Quite the feat. Most golfers are ecstatic to shoot just one, if they’re lucky, let alone two!

So, what makes the 62-year-old Grinter tick, you may ask? One word that sums him up best might be his passion – for issues, causes and diversion. Take his time in college in Florida. While most students might be included to spend their spare time away from the books going to the beach and hanging out in bars, Grinter turned to advocacy. He and five fellow students, along with a few faculty members, began a campaign to create a buffer zone on Florida’s Gulf Coast to prevent oil exploration from happening on the pristine waterway.

“I’m a fisherman, so I get involved,” Grinter recalls. “We collected 40,000 signatures asking for more public hearings” on the issue. At the time, the federal government was trying to establish a buffer zone that would stretch a mere six miles out into the Gulf, but that wasn’t far enough for Grinter and his companions. “We said let’s go for a 40-mile buffer,” he remembers, with enthusiasm. “It ended up being a 100-mile buffer zone. … That thing still hasn’t been touched.”

Eventually, the Florida Legislature passed a constitutional amendment forbidding oil exploration on the Gulf Coast. The moratorium is still in place, although the Trump Administration has proposed oil drilling in California and Florida. To date, nothing has taken place.

Grinter’s passion can also be seen in his efforts to build and maintain trails on Bainbridge. It wasn’t long after he and his family moved here in 2001 that he threw himself into “building trails and connecting pathways so myself and my young kids could have safe, pleasant ways to walk or bike without being forced onto a busy road. It’s been rewarding but there’s a long way to go.”

Around 2002-2003, he joined the City’s Non-Motorized Transportation Committee and got seriously involved in working on trails. Back then, he recalls, there were few, if any, work parties willing to do the nitty-gritty job of building trails. Grinter soon became chair of the trails committee and helped piece together a group of volunteers willing to roll up their sleeves and construct trails.

“My efforts on increasing ways to travel by bike and foot have involved working with both the Park District and (the) City,” he says. “Transportation and recreation are a gray area that fall into both agency’s planning efforts, so it has not been an easy road so to speak.”

Nevertheless, Grinter’s accomplishments are impressive. Over the years, he’s led volunteer efforts to design and build some of the Bainbridge Island Metro Park District’s more popular trails including the Forest to Sky Trail, Blakely Harbor to Fort Ward Trail and Close Property Trails. “Working with these dedicated volunteers was an honor,” he says. “It was a sacred privilege to be trusted to build permanent pathways on beautiful raw land and one we didn’t take lightly. Our small group of leaders took great pains to design routes that were both physically and socially sustainable. It’s wonderful to (now) see the popularity of these routes. There were numerous high school kids who helped build them and enough time has now passed that those kids have kids of their own and are walking or biking on trails that their parents built. How cool is that?”

Grinter says he has had his hand in helping to design and build at least a “half dozen prominent trails” on the island. His current favorite is the establishment of the Lost Valley Trail – near the Head of the Bay – that he started mapping out and building along with his kids and neighbors during the Covid 19 Pandemic. “It’s a gorgeous route that adjoins one of the most pristine watersheds on the island,” he notes, with pride. 

Besides the physical aspects of trail building, Grinter has worked behind the scenes on number of issues, including helping to put together a petition drive to gather enough signatures to put the formation of the Metro Park District on the ballot. In addition, he’s worked with the City of Bainbridge Island to help to create “Interlocal Agreements between the city and Park District to work collaboratively on connecting pathways that serve both recreation and transportation users”

He also led the volunteer design and construction of more than a half a mile of separated gravel pathway along Sportsman’s Club Road between Finch and New Brooklyn. “This separated path is a template for how we can have safe walking and biking facilities that blend well aesthetically with the delicate urban/rural balance that’s so important for our community,” he says. “The route has been very well used with over 35,000 miles walked by users over the past 18 years.”

What’s Grinter’s vision for island trails? “I visualize an interconnected network of connecting pathways that link existing quiet roads, public right of ways and publicly owned land to create ways to travel the island by foot or bike without constantly being forced onto our busy arterial roads.” he notes, echoing the thoughts of many walkers and bikers. “We don’t have these opportunities everywhere on the island, but where they exist, we need to pursue them.”

When Grinter isn’t thinking of parks and trails, his mind drifts to another passion: his knife sharpening business, aptly called “Island Edge.” Twenty-some years he bought a precision knife-sharpening tool that wasn’t exactly cheap, he recalls. He showed it to his wife, an attorney, who asked him how much he paid for it. When he fessed up, she suggested maybe he could find a way to pay for it. Thus, a business was born.

Indeed, “20 years later the system has never missed a beat and has sharpened thousands of knives on the island,” he says. What is it about this activity that gives him so much joy? “There’s no built-in obsolescence in a good knife. It’s not a throw away item,” he explains. “Delivering more joy to the cooking experience for my customers is fun, especially for new customers. I know they’re going to be blown away when they start using their (new or old) knives. Hearing those stories from my customers is always fun.”

One story stands out. Apparently, there are a lot of high-end knives on Bainbridge and others with historical significance. Take John Ellis, for example. The long-time island actor, co-founder of The Edge Comedy Troupe and retired businessman, brought Grinter a chef’s knife whose history traces back to around 1898, or maybe even further back. Ellis told Grinter the knife was made from metal scraps obtained from the USS Oregon, a battleship that was built in the late 1800s, but was decommissioned in 1956, and sent to the scrap heap. After sharpening it, Grinter says the historical blade is still in fine fiddle.

Grinter charges roughly $2 an inch to sharpen most knives, be they bread knives, steak knives, hair shears, garden tools, or whatever. He used to set up regularly at the Bainbridge Farmer’s Market, but he’s abandoned that gig in favor of appearing once a month – usually on a Wednesday – at Bay Hay & Feed. When he’s not hiking, fishing, snowboarding or golfing, he’s more readily available by appointment. Either call: 206 916-3583 or visit his web site: Bainbridge Island Knife Sharpening – Bainbridge Island, Washington

Check out some of John Grinter’s photography at: John Grinter’s Photography

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