body recovery has at least 3 or 4 tried and true methods and they work just fine single player...
1) is the most basic. you put on your best food and spare gear, and go kill everything and get it. This assumes you were not somehow in a zone you can't handle, which can happen, but hopefully you have learned your lesson about this early.
2) nekkid sneak. Just sneak up to your corpse and get it. This assumes you have learned to sneak, which you can practice in the meadows on deer. When you can kill deer naked with a club reliably, you can do this, with a bit of caution.
3) bowcheese. Just take a bow and a bunch of arrows, a spare hoe, and 10-20 wood. Find a place near your body but not in danger and raise a small terrain platform. Alert and shoot the enemy to death. Recover body before more spawn. Keep enough stamina to run back up top your nest if you alert anything.
4) if your body is near major water, you can raft or other boat if you have one close and use 1-3 above to get close, swim in, grab or fight and grab or even bow from the raft and grab.

and that is just the legit methods. Simple deleting your character file and replacing it with the backup puts you at your respawn point but with all your pre-death stuff. Its cheating, but unlike other methods, its very safe. As a side effect you get spare gear copy so next time you can use #1.