The Black Rock Desert - Desert Places Author:William L. Fox Vast and featureless, Nevada's Black Rock Desert is the largest flat area on the continent, where the sound barrier was broken in a car. It is a place of total silence--not even birds or insects live here--except when thousands of humans congregate for the Burning Man Festival on Labor Day weekend. Writer William Fox and photographer Mark Klet... more »t now turn their combined talents to an appreciation of this desolate corner of North America, inviting readers to consider how the mind responds to a place so empty that it's both physically overpowering and psychically disorienting.« less