‘Embrace the slowness’: He left the Twin Cities for a life in the Minnesota woods

‘Embrace the slowness’: He left the Twin Cities for a life in the Minnesota woods

BEMIDJI — Nate Johnson is an expert tanner of animal hides, builder of woven wood baskets and maker of beautiful knives and hand tools. He lives in the woods south of Bemidji. If you’d met him 25 years ago, it’s the last place you would have expected to find him. Fresh out of college in 2000, he quickly built a reputation as an arts promoter, launching the successful Twin Cities film and music festival Sound Unseen. After three years, though, he…