An ambitious project several years in the making is coming together piece by piece.

The opening of the first major piece of the 55-mile Whitefish Trail (the project formerly known as A Trail Runs Through It) is being marked Saturday with a celebration at the Lion Mountain trailhead and in downtown Whitefish.

This is something worth celebrating: 12 miles of new trail available to the public in the Lion Mountain, Skyles Lake and Lupfer Road areas.

There still is plenty more to be done in five more years of construction for the project that will link trails across state, federal and private lands.

The trail is testament to the power of cooperation in attaining a shared vision that improves the community.

A glimmer of good economic news surfaced this week in the Flathead Valley.

WaveSource Inc., a company that plans to make custom-made contact lenses in Kalispell, has secured $600,000 in private equity funding.

On top of that, the firm received a state grant of $87,633.

The funding infusion is expected to boost WaveSource’s efforts to manufacture lenses designed to correct for high-order aberrations and multifocal optics.

The plan calls for a partnership with Montana State University’s Spectrum Laboratories and Bridger Photonics.

The end result, we hope, is a viable addition to the local economy as well as job creation.

That slapping sound you hear (intensifying in the evenings) is the price those of us who venture outside are paying for a wet spring and a soggy early summer.

All the moisture that has made the Flathead Valley so green and lush also has been welcomed by mosquitoes, which are flourishing in some parts of the valley.

The bumper crop of flood-water mosquitoes is bound to increase the irritation level for people heading outside.

There are some partial solutions — drain any areas of standing water, wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants, resort to mosquito repellent or even stay inside — but above all people may have to be resilient and endure the stings of summer.