1.   B Reactor rises above the desolate plain here, a windowless, dilapidated and ominous landmark of the nuclear age.

2.   Forget the romanticism of train travel in major-league baseball before airplanes, the rattling rides through mountain ranges and desolate plains.

3.   Storm clouds part dramatically above a desolate plain near Santa Fe, N.M.

4.   On the desolate windswept plains, the burned-out hulks of tanks baked in the sun, the remnants of an earlier war between communists and Islamic rebels.