This is one of those days of public emergency where nothing’s really stopping you from taking a walk on the beach. Nothing logistical, anyway, as long as you don’t want to drive to Malibu. And as long as you don’t mind breathing air heavy with smoke and ash, and as long as you don’t object to sheet-white skies with oyster-shell highlights, and aren’t turned off by reflections in the water roughly the color of butter, and disturbing, unpretty yellowcaps spotting the surf.

Sometimes when there’s a forest fire nearby, you get an entire day of golden twilight color, and spectacular sunsets thanks to infinite reflections of sunlight off airborne particulate matter. This is not one of those days. The air contains way too many dead oak trees and scrub bushes to allow beautiful light to glimmer between clouds of smoke. Don’t look for a silver lining of any kind because there isn’t one.

A mid-November day like this would usually see cars lined up all along Pacific Coast Highway, parked bumper to bumper on the beach side and stopping-and-going in the traffic lanes. Families would be pulling out their coolers and strollers and blankets, dragging them all along the path down to the shore, and staking their claim on the soft sand to spend the day in the surf. It’s the kind of November day that’s usually broadcast to friends and families back home in northern places: hey, look where we are in November! Look what we’re doing in November! How are you enjoying the rain? Is it snowing yet? Haha!

Today the beach flags are flying at half mast, and PCH is empty from where I-10 meets the coast to the spot several miles to the north where a police barricade stops you at Sunset Boulevard. At that point you can park your car wherever and hike north — if you want.

The only people here are the ironic types, and fishermen, and some unsmiling tourists. I park near Gladstone’s restaurant and walk up the beach with my camera. It’s all the same buildings as usual. The same crashing waves. The same number of steps to the shore, roughly.

They say the late summer and autumn will blend into an annual “fire season.” If they do, will people someday flock here to experience this quiet dystopia? Will they take advantage of the beach in their usual droves, fleeing the less profound settings in their urban apartments and Valley subdivisions? Will they sip cocktails on Gladstones’ porch to watch the waves crashing in the smoky air, or let their kids kick the water and chase the hardy birds?

The sun is a circle of white and ash drifts in the dimples in the sand. As I walk back to my car I realize it is an extra effort to breathe. I’ll pay for this later.

All reports suggest that further climate change is coming, regardless of what we do now. We have to adjust. Can we adjust to this?

A guy walks toward me wearing a backpack and a face mask, holding a crowbar or some other authoritative thing. He seems resolute, like someone who came to this beach, today, intentionally, maybe because of all of the above.

Today it looks like he’s got some answers.