BORDER OF MAINE, QUEBEC – In 2003, drug agents in Maine received information that a shipment of cocaine was to be delivered across the Canadian border near Coburn Gore.

A team was quickly assembled. More than dozen agents and county deputies went to the heavily wooded area in northern Maine between Oxford and Franklin counties.

Carrying automatic weapons, the team hiked deep into the dense woods, positioning themselves to intercept the person or group trying to bring coke from Quebec into Maine.

The laborious trek into the wilderness yielded results.

Sort of.

What police found out there on the frontier were two men and a 14-year-old boy hunting moose near the border. No drugs. No cocaine on its way from one country to another.

This kind of story amuses the few people who live in tiny towns near the border. In Coburn Gore and on the other side, in Quebec, they are not just apathetic about the concept of threats between Quebec and Maine, they are bemused.

“There is nothing out there,” says Claude Gosselin. “There are no terrorists. There are no drug runners. It is just woods and woods and woods.”

Gosselin works at Accueil Gosford, a sort of last-stop hiking outfitter in the woods south of St. Augustin de Woburn in Quebec, 6 miles or more – as the crow flies – from the border.

Gosselin speaks in fragmented English, like many in Quebec. He is alone in a small office near Mont Gosford. The building smells of wood smoke and sits at the end of a lonely road. Gosselin smirks a bit when asked about the possibility of people sneaking across the border from there into Oxford County, Maine.

“It’s nowhere,” Gosselin says. “It’s a frontier.”

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Accueil Gosford, along the Arnold River, is one of the places photographer Amber Waterman and I ended up after many fruitless attempts to drive to the unmanned border above Oxford County. We tried logging roads, unplowed streets with no name and other treacherous paths we thought might deliver us through the wilderness to where we wanted to go.

We got stuck in a snowbank along a logging road owned by International Paper. We felt we were getting close but were still a dozen miles from the border. A logger who spoke no English at all had to push us out of the snow. I didn’t remember how to say “thank you” in French so I gave him the double thumbs up, instead.

It didn’t get much easier from there.

We never got closer to the border than Claude Gosselin. In the summertime, even ardent hikers stick to established trails in the area and they do not make it as far down as the border, he told us. In the wintertime, most people would need a sherpa to make the long journey.

“It’s very beautiful,” Gosselin said. “But it is all part of nowhere.”

He showed us photographs of the area between Quebec and Oxford County. It is beautiful yes, but probably not so much for the person who is trying to hike between the countries.

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The land between Quebec and Oxford County is ribbed by a chain of mountains. There are streams running to Lake Arnold. The forest is thick. A person could conceivably make a try for the border from Quebec. But on the other side, he, she or they would not be instantly delivered into sweet relief. The closest populated township on the Maine side is Lincoln Plantation, population around four dozen. No Motel Six, no bus station, nothing for the weary smuggler. Just more untamed wilderness, as far as the naked eye can see, on the U.S. side.

“It’s only woods, a lot of woods,” says Jacque LeBlanc, dropping off mail at the manned border in Coburn Gore. “There are some (Passamaquoddy) Indians living in the woods there.”

For 12 years, LeBlanc has been crossing the manned border at Coburn Gore five times a week, working as a courier. In his experience, he has not seen or heard of drug runners, immigrants or terrorists tempted by a chance to cross one way or another through the woods.

“There is no danger here,” LeBlanc says. “Nobody up here is worried.”

According to Gosselin, the people who hike in the area near the Arnold River tend to travel in groups. They stick to marked trails and stay in cabins set up for campers. They don’t meander away from the trail system and press deeper into the wilds approaching the U.S. border.

“The only people out there,” says Gosselin, “are hikers. And when the season is here, moose hunters.”

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When Amber and I mentioned the idea of trying to snowshoe to the border, Gosselin looked at us wistfully, almost sadly, as though he believed we would never be seen again. Not alive, at least.

That’s not to say that the woods between Quebec and Oxford County don’t offer at least a chance at a free pass between the countries. Some of the maps we consulted showed at least a trace of roads winding down toward the border.

We tried many of them, only to find the roads gated, snow-covered or non-existent. Some maps listed those as “unimproved roads” and were of no help at all. We could not get beyond Claude. But could a smuggler or other crook do it in better weather and with more thorough preparation?

A dedicated person with criminal intent could make the trip. It would be hard work in good weather, potentially deadly in wintertime. They would need proper gear, global positioning equipment and good physical health, most agree.

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“It’s a very remote and rugged area,” says Gerry Baril, supervisor of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. “It’s not for the average day tripper.”

Which might be one reason for police and border officials to worry about the near unpassable region. The forest is so forbidding on both sides of the border, some criminals might see it as a grueling trek but one with almost no risk of capture – go the Grizzly Adams route and traverse the rough terrain, and chances of success are great.

“It’s very hard to penetrate up there,” Baril says, “But it’s also hard to defend.”

In Oxford and Franklin counties, police are using money from a hefty federal grant to bolster their capability of patrolling the area.

In Quebec, most people seem genuinely perplexed when told about those increased patrols on the Maine side of the U.S. border. It is though someone asked if they have heard of people walking across the water of Lac Arnold in summertime.

“I don’t understand it,” Gosselin said.

But Baril says funds being used in Oxford County to train and beef up patrols are not wasted funds. If few people are trying to get across the border illegally, it is important to keep it that way.

“The intent is to deter people with less than legal ambitions,” Baril says. “They might see no risk in trying to cross in that area. But now, the risk of detection has increased.”

In other words, a criminal might go through the physical hell of hiking the virtual jungle between Quebec and Maine, only to find himself in the hands of police after all – sunburned or frostbitten, tired and under arrest.

Don Goulet was a border officer stationed at Coburn Gore back for a time in the 1970s. Little has changed outside the tiny buildings occupied by border patrol agents since then.

In Goulet’s experience, people looking to smuggle drugs or even people across the border are more likely to try concealing the booty in a private or commercial vehicle. It’s a risky endeavor and one that conjures images of sweaty capture in “Midnight Express.” But passage through the manned border will take just minutes where a perilous trek through the frontier might take days.

“Du gross bois,” Goulet said.

It is French for “big woods.” Nobody disagrees about that. It is the kind of terrain that might make a Navy seal grimace.

“It’s rugged,” said Goulet, a former Marine himself. “There’s no doubt about that.”

The most prevalent issue from a police standpoint, he said, is moose poaching. Canadian hunters sometimes cross into the U.S., shoot a moose and drag it back into Quebec.

On both sides of the border, it is a crime. In 2003, the two men found hunting there might have been innocent of cocaine trafficking, but they were busted for poaching. It cost them tens of thousands of dollars to get back home.

Goulet believes the border between Jackman and Canada is more porous. The woods are less dense, there are more logging roads and more clear trails.

When presented with the idea that a city reporter and photographer might make a try for the border over Oxford County on foot, in January, without special equipment, he kind of chuckled.

He did not say “au revoir” but you could tell he was thinking it.