She survived, in part, because of the hunting and trapping skills she had developed on the island. She had not arrived as a hunter. She arrived as a seamstress. She learned to shoot on the island. She learned to trap foxes on the island. These are skills that she acquired through necessity, in the specific conditions of Wrangel Island, after arriving without them. The acquisition of those skills is not automatic or inevitable — it required her attention, her effort, and her willingness to learn tasks she had not been expected or trained to do.
She survived, in part, because of characteristics that are harder to quantify: the capacity to continue working when continuation is not obviously rational, the ability to maintain structure and purpose under conditions of extreme isolation, the specific quality of focus that kept her typing messages for rescuers in July when no rescuer was visible on the horizon.
She survived, in part, because of luck — because the Donaldson was able to push through the ice in August 1923, because the ice conditions cooperated, because she was visible when the ship approached and was able to reach the beach. Survival in extreme conditions is never entirely a matter of individual effort; circumstances cooperate or they don’t.
But the summary version — that she survived because she was resourceful, adaptable, and willing to keep working — is not wrong. It is incomplete, but the incompleteness does not undermine the core assessment. She did things she had not done before. She kept the camp. She kept herself alive. She stayed on the island until someone came to take her off it, which is what she had said she would do.