I put my kayak into the New Meadows River the other day. The wicked heat baking the water flashed me back to a childhood memory of the Mississippi River, where I was born: I recalled holding my mother’s hand and gazing at a seemingly endless expanse of steaming, crawling molasses. Indeed, because of its countless tidal nooks and crannies like the New Meadows, Maine’s coastline at low tide is almost as long as the Missouri-Mississippi system. But there the similarities end. Our river is white-capped and dotted with piney islands and always in flux from the push and pull of the ocean. It’s a long way from the Midwest, and for sure I’m not a kid anymore.

I inserted my ear buds and clicked my iPod on to John Stewart, whose birthday is Sept. 5. No, not the political humorist and Daily Show host “Jon” Stewart. Rather, the singer-songwriter and former Kingston Trio member. John died seven years ago and would have been 75 this year. Heroically, he made music right up to the end. I was in the mood for the old John with that slightly frayed but wonderfully seasoned voice.

You probably know little about him. After the Trio he embarked on a 40-year solo career, during which he wrote, performed, and recorded almost 400 songs. These blend rock, folk, and country. He composed the Monkee’s 1960s hit “Daydream Believer” and had a top-5 strike, “Gold,” in the 1970s. Joan Baez, Nanci Griffith, and Roseanne Cash, among other notables, have recorded his songs. But, for the most part, John labored in obscurity, performing for small but avid groups of fans and recording much of his material, often live, on homemade cassettes and cds distributed to a small network of admirers. He was a multi-talented painter and photographer, a teacher, a humanitarian, and a gentleman. His life’s art creates a portrait of America and dwells on several recurring themes: the broken but still inspiring promises of the New (JFK and RFK, with whom he campaigned) and old (the West of his native California, Hollywood, and Route 66) frontiers; Armstrong and space exploration; the rhythm of the racetrack and Secretariat; the dreams and disappointments of ordinary Americans; and our loss of innocence and simpler way of life. To be sure, some of his songs are a little corny, but even the duds are usually catchy. His best songs — and there are many — fill the heart and grab you with a riff that you can’t let go.

John wrote a lot about dreams, his favorite theme. He was, after all, a daydream believer. But he also loved the idea of rivers, a motif used in over 40 of his songs. In his songs time flows and nature exerts. The river, in a song by that name, is the rhythm that inspires his music and carries his feelings. “Strange Rivers” are invisible currents that drift us to the destinies we cannot predict or control. And so on.

Rivers meander through John’s last CD, which buoyed me as I paddled on the New Meadows. John, I think, was beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s and sensed the end was near. In a touching song about slipping away, he asks for comfort and direction from his mother/muse “Sister Mercy:”

She would take me to the river

Where I could lay my head,

And I would close my eyes

And remember what she said.

She said nothing is forever

So grab it while you can.

Find your dreams along the river

As they move across the land.

In another song, about unrealized dreams, John “never got to see ‘New Orleans’ and ride the river to the sea.” But John could not leave on a bittersweet note. My favorite song on the cd, “The Day the River Sang,” is about promises that can be realized and their power to make life sing. The cd is named after this song, his last reflection on a promised land.

As I paddled, it was a magic world out on the New Meadows, that river of the sea. With my ear buds in, perhaps I was humming too loud: the lobstermen I passed seemed amused at the way the river sang.

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Michael Jones lives in Brunswick.