After much searching on a November day, I found this soapstone bowl manufacturing site late in the afternoon.   With darkness approaching, and a 30 minute bushwhack back to my truck, I didn't want to get caught in these woods after dark, so I didn't have time to check the site thoroughly.   I don't think I found the main quarry site yet, since I found more bowl fragments than quarried boulders.

Fragment of soapstone bowl 1

Fragment of soapstone bowl 2

Bowl fragments

A future bowl preform, showing initial pecking. This was the start of the process to shape and remove a preform from a soapstone boulder. It was apparently abandoned at this early stage.

Detached bowl preform 1

Detached bowl preform 2 - bottom (broken)

Possibly a bowl "pedestal" scar, where a preform had been removed. I didn't have time on this visit to clean off the moss and check it out more thoroughly. (I checked it more closely on my next visit and it is just a natural formation on the rock.)

Surprisingly, I found a few late gentians with flowers. These had pretty much bloomed out...

But these still had their distinctive blue flowers, although they were on the way out...

Unidentified tree fungi

UPDATE - Two weeks later I made a return visit to the site...

I found two additional bowl fragments, for a total of four. The larger pieces measure roughly 8 x 12 inches, with a thickness of 1 - 1.5 inches. I have no doubt that there are more here, hidden under the thick November leaf covering. But I still hadn't found the source quarry site...

See January 2019 Explorations for discovery of the nearby bowl quarry.

All Text & Images: Copyright 2018.