Uncle Si sees just how big the Outside really is

When morning comes, Si wanders around in amazement, finally able to see, taking everything in. The night had been windy and dusty, but the day is clear and bright and Uncle Si can see almost, it seems, forever. That is, he probably could have seen that far if everything around him weren't so big. The Outside is so much bigger in real life than he thought it would be.

Uncle Si didn't even know the Navy had trucks! 

The trucks and blast walls and fences and wire and roads and barriers are all so big that Uncle Si feels like he just might be the tiniest person in Afghanistan. 

He crosses what seem like miles of gravel fields with stones the size of his head. This, he thinks, is the kind of place a guy his size could really get lost!

Or perhaps the kind of place where a guy his size could get accidentally locked up in a shipping container only to find himself somewhere he didn't want to go like Madagascar. Or Canada. Or somewhere really out there, like Panguitch. Of all the places he'd heard the Uniforms talk about over the months, Panguitch is the place that sounds the most remote. 

But Uncle Si isn't scared of how big everything is, he just didn't know until now how big the Outside really is.  As he stands taking in all he can see in the huge Outside, Si doesn't see himself as small, just that everything else is so big!

After wandering around a while longer, Uncle Si figures that in order to really get a good view of what is out there, he will have to get higher than everything else. And doing that, he knows, will require climbing. A lot of climbing. So he finds a ladder to the top of one of the tallest buildings he can see and starts up. Climbing with a cup of tea in one hand is certainly not an easy thing to do, but after grunting and groaning and sometimes leaping for the next step, Si makes it to the roof without spilling even one drop. He walks to the edge of roof to see what he can see.

Uncle Si is amazed at the view. He sees buildings and tents and empty spaces and lots of dirt and big trucks and Uniforms walking here and there and helicopters in the sky and airplanes landing. Everything that once had looked so huge, looks quite a bit smaller from up on that roof. Even the mountains, which he knows are bigger than anything he's seen that day, look small and easily climbable in the distance. Si realizes that there is just so much more to see, more than he will be able to in one lifetime, and so he stands there enjoying the view feeling both small and big at the same time.