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A map, at its most basic level, is a navigation tool to get its users from Point A to Point B. At times, however, a map can be elevated to a lifesaver of sorts, delivering the lost from unfamiliar side streets, or a guide, pushing us toward a scenic route or helping us find new ways to arrive at a familiar location.

In those respects, Mike Hermann and Margaret Pearce created much more than a mere map with their documentation of the 17th century travels of French explorer Samuel de Champlain, a project they undertook for the Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine.

Drawing on research, Champlain’s journals and their own re-creation of his journey through what is now southern Canada and the northern United States, Hermann and Pearce developed “They Would Not Take Me There: People, Places and Stories from Champlain’s Travels in Canada, 1603-1616.”

The recent release of the 39-by-56-inch narrative — more book than map — was meant to coincide with two key 400th anniversary years. The first, 2008, marked Champlain’s founding of Quebec. The second, 2009, is the anniversary of Champlain’s naming of Lake Champlain after himself.

Hermann, a senior cartographer for the Canadian-American Center, and Pearce, an Ohio University assistant professor of geography, wanted the map to communicate the complexity of Champlain’s travels and feed the interest of people in Canada and the U.S. considering the anniversaries.

“We didn’t want to create a map that [people] would read in a day and say, ‘Oh, I got it,’” Pearce said. “We wanted a map they would read for weeks and spend time with, and discover things, to give them an experience of taking a journey. So reading the map is a journey, Champlain went on a journey, and it brings the reader closer to the subject.”

The map, which is presented in both English and French with translation provided by UMaine French professor Raymond Pelletier, evolved into a journey on several levels for those involved in the project.

Hermann and Pearce, who are colleagues and life partners, started work on the map in late fall 2007 when Stephen Hornsby, the director of the Canadian-American Center, proposed a map project that would mark the anniversary dates. The researchers began reading aloud Champlain’s journals to find key passages they wanted to include.

At the end of December 2007, Hermann and Pearce left Orono in a Toyota Land Cruiser and traced Champlain’s trip. They first headed north toward the Gaspe Peninsula in the province of Quebec. Then they drove south along the St. Lawrence River to Quebec City and then Montreal. They continued north along the Ottawa River to Georgian Bay and then back down to where Champlain crossed Lake Ontario.

Pearce and Hermann, who live in Ohio — Hermann telecommutes to Orono — went home from there.

“That was our three weeks of field checking,” Pearce said. “Literally during that process, we just visited the places that Champlain wrote about … and read what he wrote, and looked at what he saw just to get a feel for those things we were going to be mapping.”

The irony of the trip, Pearce said, was that Champlain typically did not spend winters in North America but returned to France.

When Pearce and Hermann had gathered their information, they began the process of plotting the map and organizing it with the passages from Champlain’s journals they wanted to use in the map.

Rich and detailed, at times heartwarming and harrowing, Hermann and Pearce’s map takes readers along the same trip they drove last winter and Champlain made centuries ago.

Hermann and Pearce went into detail in five places where Champlain spent long periods of time. Each of the locations — Tadoussac, where the Saguenay River meets the St. Lawrence; Quebec, Montreal, Morrison Island in the Ottawa River, and the Penetanguishere Peninsula in Georgian Bay — are accompanied by stories from Champlain’s journal.

The technique of using explorers’ own words in maps is not new, but Hermann and Pearce believe their map is unique in its use of sequential panels to tell the narrative. The stories flow from one panel to another with details of lakes, rivers and settlements.

“It really challenges conventional notions of what a map would be,” Hermann said. “I think it’s more akin to a book than a map, so it sort of combines two genres because the way you read those sequential panels is the way you would read the book with the story unfolding. … We found a way graphically to combine two genres and literally embed a story in the map.”

Pearce and Hermann begin that story on May 21, 1603, when Champlain “sighted Gaspe, a very high land, and began to enter the said river of Canada, skirting the south coast as far as Mantanne, distant from Gaspe sixty-five leagues.”

The tale comes to a close in 1616, after which Champlain is increasingly involved in colonial administration. He eventually died in 1635 at what is now Quebec City, but his grave has not been located.

In between those events, Pearce and Hermann document Champlain’s primary goal in his explorations, which was to find a passage between the St. Lawrence River and what is now James Bay in hopes of finding a way to the Pacific Ocean. Despite assurances from the native people that they would take him to an inland sea, the trips never worked out. Hence the name of Pearce and Hermann’s map.

Several of these disappointments are noted, including one such incident in 1616 when Champlain visited the Pisirinin people on the Penetanguishere Peninsula. Champlain had hoped they would take him north, but when he reached the settlement, Champlain was needed to mediate a dispute that had erupted. As a result of the delay, his trip north was again postponed.

“If anyone was sorry it was I; for I had quite expected to see that year what in many other preceding years I had sought for with great solicitude and effort amid much toil and risk of my life,” he wrote.

The mapmakers documented the heartwarming episodes, including hearty welcomes from some native groups, and harrowing incidents such as the discovery in Quebec of a locksmith’s plot to kill Champlain and hand the fort over to the Spanish or the Basques.

In a July 30, 1609, journal entry, the explorer notes the place where he fended off an attacking native group. “I named it Lake Champlain,” he wrote.

Pearce and Hermann attempted to add a host of visual clues in the journal passages. Dramatic events may be distinguished by bold print or larger letters. In the section about the plot to kill Champlain, the river is colored red to signify the beheading of the plotter. Some panels are white to denote wintertime.

“There are a lot of the hidden nuances in the map that make it sort of more than a map and a little bit of an artistic work,” Hermann said.

Pelletier played a key role as translator. Pearce and Hermann sent Pelletier the passages they planned to use, and he translated the French of Champlain’s journals, which is different from modern French in the same way Shakespearean English is from our modern language.

Champlain’s use of the term sauvage, the map denotes, is alternatively translated from French to English as savage, Indian or native. The 17th century usage, according to the note, is closer to our word native.

Although Pearce and Hermann managed to make everything fit, Champlain died without having attained his ultimate goal of a trade route, which Pearce and Hermann sought to bring out in the map.

But Pearce believes the explorer must have led a satisfying life anyway. Champlain appeared to have been a curious man who traded the familiarity of his ocean-faring ship for a birch-bark canoe, put his journey in the hands of native people he didn’t know, and mingled with the fur traders and whalers who made their way in the same areas.

“I wouldn’t say that he died disappointed in a larger sense,” Pearce said. “Life was rich and dramatic, and I would say that that was exactly the life he would have chosen had he had it any other way.”

Copies of the map cost $14.99 and may be obtained at the Canadian-American Center or the UM Bookstore on campus. For more information about the Canadian-American Center, go to www.umaine.edu/canam.