Early in the game the respawn points when you die are entirely random and depend on where you died, this may mean you will have a long trek to recover your possessions from your corpse.
However this will change later in the game once you have unlocked the ability to craft sleeping bags and beds as these items will become re-spawn points when you die. Try to unlock this ability as soon as you can as it will make managing deaths much easier.
To unlock the ability to craft sleeping bags and beds you need to collect 40 dinosaur hides. At the start of the game this is not easy to do but if you stick to smaller beasts and use the weapons you have crafted effectively you should not have too many problems completing the task.