Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves.... The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes.

Borland describes the first, tentative signals of fall color—those early “impatient” branches that turn before the rest. The “long light” suggests late-afternoon or late-season sun, which makes the maples’ emerging reds and golds appear like a preview of the full autumn spectacle to come. By calling early-turning limbs “impatient” and likening trees to learners who must “time” their changes, he personifies the forest as a community moving (mostly) in seasonal rhythm. The passage celebrates anticipation: autumn is not only the peak blaze of color, but also the subtle promise of it, glimpsed in scattered hints that sharpen one’s attention to gradual change.