Dairy-Free Blue Cornmeal-Spelt Flapjacks

The Hummingbird crew got together with the Cafe Mam crew for our Fifth Annual overnight adventure on the river with coworkers.

The put-in at River House was easy water — flat, green, patient — but everyone knew the Marist Rapids were waiting a half mile down, so the loading got careful fast. Dry bags cinched twice. Coolers strapped low and centered. Livin double-checked the trim on his canoe like a man who'd swum that stretch before and didn't care to repeat it. Sixteen of us, six from Cafe Mam and ten from Hummingbird, stood around in the kind of loose, half-familiar cluster that happens when two crews who've traded emails and maybe a few warehouse visits finally meet in person, wearing PFDs instead of name tags.

By 2pm we pushed off. The current took the flotilla in that unhurried way rivers do when they know they've got you for the next two days, and the rapids, when they came, were more thrill than trouble — everyone through, boats intact, adrenaline doing a lap around the group before settling back into paddling rhythm.

We made camp at the confluence with the McKenzie, where the two rivers braid together and the gravel bar widens out enough for a small village of tents. Kitchen went up, group circle got staked out with camp chairs, and Chris had a line in the water before his own tent stakes were even set. The man has priorities.

Dinner was chaos in the best way — tacos, veggies straight out of Chris's garden, Ashley's salsa disappearing faster than anyone could refill the bowl, and a taco bar so sprawling it had colonized the entire deck of Luke's inflatable kayak, which never expected to become serving furniture but rose to the occasion. Cold drinks went around. The evening light went long and gold over the water, and the talk ran late — the specific, easy kind of late-night talk that happens between people who spend all week in coffee and bulk foods and finally have a river between them instead of a warehouse floor.

Morning announced itself before anyone was properly awake: Cafe Mam's French Roast, brewed dark and rolling out over the river bar like it owned the place. Mugs filled. The griddle came alive with Blue Cornmeal Spelt Flapjacks, and the dogs ran the beach in wide, ecstatic loops like they'd personally organized the whole trip. By the time everyone was full — properly, happily full — the tents were coming down and the boats were going back together, gear finding its way into dry bags with the practiced ease of a second morning.

We were back on the water by 10, and the river took us slow and easy through the late-summer morning. Bald eagles kept watch from the cottonwoods and the high blue overhead, tracking the strange little parade of canoes, rafts, kayaks and a paddleboard below like they'd seen this crew before and approved of the company. Conversation drifted boat to boat. Nobody paddled hard. Nobody wanted to.

Harrisburg came up quieter than expected — the takeout beach, the trucks waiting, the particular tiredness that only two days on a river gives you. We hauled boats up the bank and started the unloading, already trading plans for next year before the gear was even dry.

Below you'll find the recipe for the pancakes that wow'd the whole bunch of us.