 |
Friends and family gathered Wednesday to
remember Jason Parish (left), 36, who was killed last Sunday when a tree
fell and struck him on the Appalachian Trail in Maryland. Jess McDowell
(right) played guitar during the gathering. (left: Facebook; right:
Joseph Kaczmarek/For the Daily News)
|
THERE
WAS nothing more Michael Sparks and Kelly Quain could do, so they
grabbed their gear and hiked down a trail without their friend, the
weight of what just happened too unreal to weigh them down yet.
It was Sunday morning, and they were heading out from the Washington
County, Md., shelter where Philadelphia folk singer Jason Parish, 36,
had just been killed by a fallen tree, and the two men stumbled upon
something strange, stuck in the mud. It was a vinyl record, a
compilation of Dixieland jazz pressed in 1957, and Sparks grabbed it and
continued on toward the car, holding it under his arm.
On Wednesday afternoon, the record was playing in The Mermaid Inn in
Chestnut Hill, and the bar was mostly empty except for Sparks and his
wife and Quain and his daughter. The tunes - "Muskrat Ramble," "When the
Saints Go Marching In," "At the Jazz Band Ball" and others - were
upbeat, with wild flourishes from the trumpeters, music that rouses
people out of their seats, or whatever else is holding them down.
Quain had tears in his eyes and Sparks had sunglasses on, but they
were both smiling, staring down in disbelief at the record spinning
around by The Mermaid's front window. They figured they'd hang the
record on a wall.
"We cleaned it up and it's like . . . perfect," Sparks said. "Then,
we found out that Jason had studied classical and jazz when he first
got into music and I'm like . . . this is crazy."
The two men had come to The Mermaid Inn a few hours before friends,
co-workers and fellow musicians gathered there to remember Parish, who'd
had his release party for his CD, "A Mountain and a Hill," at the bar
in January. Quain and Sparks knew they would retell a sad story all
night, crying with friends and strangers for the next few hours and
again today at Parish's services in Dover, Del., where he grew up.
"I just wanted to tell you about the record before everyone got here," Sparks said.
Parish worked as an engineer at Ewing Cole, near Independence Mall.
Quain, 47, of Merion, and Sparks, 41, of East Falls, are also engineers,
and they all met when the three of them worked together at Brooks Bruce
& Associates, on Chestnut Street near 23rd. The three made a vow to
get at least one weekend away a year, even if it was in winter. Last
year, they took a frigid trip to Ricketts Glen State Park about 140
miles northwest of Philadelphia.
Parish's obituary said he played guitar, piano and saxophone and was a
Philadelphia Eagles fan. He attended the University of Delaware and had
two beloved mutts, Trixie and Vega, that are now with his parents.
Last Friday afternoon, the trio left Philly and planned to hike a
portion of the Appalachian Trail, starting near Harper's Ferry, W. Va.,
north about 14 miles into Maryland. They ate vegetarian stew, touched a
lot of poison ivy, and visited lookouts where the slate was stacked into
thrones. They slept in the Ed Garvey Shelter, one of the best on the
whole trail, where they swapped stories with other hikers around the
campfire they managed to build despite the deluge.
On Saturday, a random goat came to visit them while they ate dinner.
"We called it the 'Western Maryland Mountain Goat,' " Sparks said, laughing.
They both recalled Parish mentioning how wonderful the smell of a
campfire was, how it always stayed with him after the trip was over.
On Sunday morning, Quain and Sparks got up first and had coffee.
Parish, the "rock star," was still in his sleeping bag, they said. Quain
said he and Sparks were talking about the wind, about being mindful of
the trees on the hike out. They didn't hear the tree fall.
"If it snaps you hear them. This one came from the root ball," Quain said.
Parish had no time to react, Sparks said, and he stopped himself from describing more details.
The tree that hit Parish was rotted, Sparks said, and tagged for
removal, most likely by the volunteers he said maintain the trail. No
one knew what kind of tree it was.
By 8 p.m., The Mermaid Inn was filled with dozens of people, and some
made a line straight to Sparks and Quain when they learned they were
the ones hiking with Parish. They often started crying before they got
to them.
"I'm so, so sorry," musician Sarah Napolitan, 32, of Mount Airy, said to Sparks as they embraced.
Musicians who knew Parish through the Mermaid's open-mic night
collaborated on "Circle be Unbroken" and "The Lonesome Valley" and many
more sang the songs with them.
"He was a great songwriter, great guitarist, the whole deal," said
musician Mike McNichol, 58, of Glenside. "You could hear it in his
voice."
The Dixieland Jazz album spun for most of the night, although no one
could really hear it amid the chatter and the acoustic guitars. Whenever
it stopped, though, Sparks would make his way over to the record player
and reset the needle.
