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 gave it all away. Wanting to live simply, he changed his life and never looked back.

“I decided to just let it all go and start over,” Johnson said on a recent day as he readied a bucket of pig brains to tan an animal hide he’d spread across the grass at his farmstead.

Over the years, he sought out teachers who helped him master ancient crafts t

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