After planting the trees at the temple, the participants climbed into trucks, vans, and buses to make the five-kilometer trip into the mountains to the tree chosen to be ordained.
Over 200 people accompanied the more than twenty monks to the site, which had earlier been prepared by volunteer development workers and villagers.
A four-foot-tall Buddha image had been placed on a concrete stand at the base of the giant tree.
The thick vegetation around the site had been trimmed, and a tent for the monks put up.
Phrakhru Pitak commented that over twenty years ago, when he walked the eight kilometers from his village through the deep forest to school along this route, this tree was not unusual for its height or size.
Now it clearly stood out as the tallest remaining tree. One could now see for miles from it across a landscape dotted with nearly vertical maize fields, visible because of the deforested hillsides.