I think the problem was that it appears she was just drifting, with no real purpose whatsoever. She didn't commit to the idea of making a life in the wilderness for the long term - otherwise she'd be more than busy enough splitting firewood and putting up food to get through the winter. Nor did she have any real project to work at that would benefit from the solitude and isolation, no novel to write, no trunk of great books to read deeply and digest, no hard software problem to hack away at. It sounds like she was just kind of there, and then she went back. A brief, rather pointless interlude.
