Where the Deer and the Raccoons Play : Careers: From their post high in the San Gabriel Mountains, forestry assistants Tom Bristow and Jon Baker have the city at their feet.

It’s barely dawn as the red pickup winds its way along the dirt road that ascends from Altadena into the San Gabriel Mountains. Dry brush lines the left side of the narrow path, while the right side drops down the mountainside. Thousands of feet above, early morning light picks out the shape of Mt. Wilson.

Tom Bristow and Jon Baker are car-pooling this morning up what used to be the Mt. Wilson Toll Road.

This is the one day a week both men are on duty, so they take the opportunity to compare notes. The road is in good condition. Recent rains have replenished the water tanks. Someone reported a dog missing in the lower canyon a few days before.

“Most people think of this road as a hiking trail,” says Baker, “but for us it’s a more like a three-mile-long driveway.”

After 15 minutes of slow and bumpy driving, the road levels off and enters a grove of pines. The San Gabriel Valley lies 2,500 feet below. The truck pulls up to a small warehouse painted Forest Service green.

They’re at work.

“The commute isn’t bad in the morning,” says Bristow, “because we get such an early start. In the evening, though, we get plenty of traffic. Once we hit the freeways, that is.”

Bristow and Baker--forestry assistants for the Los Angeles County Fire Department--work at Henninger Flats, a 232-acre plot where deer, raccoons and squirrels constitute “traffic.”

Since 1928, the county Fire Department has maintained a conservation and forest nursery where 30,000 trees are raised annually in seedbeds. Volunteers transplant mature trees to flood- and fire-ravaged hillsides all over Southern California.

Hidden in a forest and flanked on three sides by mountains, Henninger Flats feels as if it were a hundred miles from the nearest city. Yet the area--which served for many years as a water stop for wilderness-bound prospectors and fishermen--is close enough to civilization to attract morning joggers.

And peaceful enough to attract Baker, 31, and Bristow, 33--the mainstays of seven full-time employees.

“It’s sort of an ideal place to work, especially as it gets more and more urban down below,” Baker says, looking past the nursery’s office to admire the four-star view.

They do get their share of visitors.

Fifty people during the week, 150 on weekends. They come up for the view, the fresh air, the exercise. There are campers, Boy Scouts working on their merit badges, naturalists and historians. “A lot of our visitors don’t even notice the nursery,” says Baker.

Some folks prefer their Great Outdoors indoors.

“Some people come up and ask if we have films, so I bring them into our theater,” he says, opening the door to a meeting room equipped with a VCR and video monitor.

“I hate to get people up here and then stick ‘em behind a TV screen, but if it’s what they want. . . .”

With their varied responsibilities--from nursery work to administration and day-to-day maintenance--the foresters sometimes need to be reminded of what, for most visitors, is the area’s obvious appeal.

“I like to have people come up,” says Bristow, “because, working here every day, you get a little immune to all the wildlife. But then we get kids up here, juvenile offenders who come up with work crews, and they’ve never seen anything like it. A deer will come by and all work will suddenly stop. They’ll just be staring--’Look at that!’ ”

Midway through the morning, Bristow gets back into the truck to make his rounds--visiting campsites, examining the road and trails, and tending to recently planted saplings. On a ridge above the office, he pulls over to check a water trough.

“We put this here to attract animals, to give them a good place to drink, especially during the drought,” he explains. Local wildlife includes black bear, deer, raccoons and squirrels. “With all the deer we get up here, you’d figure there’d be some smart mountain lions too, but you never see them.”

Twenty yards farther, the road turns a corner and opens onto a deep canyon. It’s one of Bristow’s favorite places: “You can climb down from here to a stream. There’s water in it, even when there’s no rain. Waterfalls too. I like to come up here and just let my imagination go.”

Turning back toward the nursery, he muses on the sense of community he’s found up here: “After a while, you get to recognize the deer, like the doe and her kids that come around. I keep thinking I should do some camping up here, but when I get a day off, it never seems like a great idea to come back.

“(But) one thing you can say about this job,” says Bristow, “is that it’s never boring. There’s always something different.”

Like the weekend the Mt. Wilson Bicycling Assn. showed up with 300 or 400 mountain bikers for a pancake breakfast.

“That was something,” he recalls.

Are the two men concerned that the urban sprawl, so visible in the distance, could spread all the way up here?

Grinning, Baker points across the clearing to the recently completed, two-story museum and office facility. “Look at that monster over there,” he says with a laugh. “You never know.”

All county foresters are trained as emergency medical technicians. Apparently, trees aren’t the only things that need special attention up here.

“Last week I found a mountain biker off the trail,” recalls Baker. “He’d gone flying off the trail and must have got 20 feet of air before he came down. He was all cut up, both his wrists were broken, and he was wandering around in a daze. He thought he’d just get his bike and walk the rest of the way up. I told him I better help him out and got rescue up here. They airlifted him out.”

A few minutes later, about the time most full-timers are just getting to work, Baker climbs back into the truck. There are some supplies to pick up in El Monte. Before disappearing inside to do some paperwork, Bristow turns and takes a look around the trees and up mountain. He smiles.

“Just another day at the office.”