Even though they had hardships, they came to accept them and cease murmurings. Nephi couches that statement as a positive, though one might just as easily read it as a defeated attitude. That, however, is certainly not Nephi’s message. He qualifies that statement to make certain that we know that they were strengthened in their afflictions.
With an easterly turn at Nahom, Lehi’s family would be traveling in a more dangerous path, and it is probable that they did not create cooking fires so as not to invite brigands. That doesn’t mean that they gnawed raw meat from the bone, however. Bedouins have long prepared a meat that is preserved, but not cooked. For some reason, Nephi doesn’t clarify this statement until later in verse 12, which states: “For the Lord had not hitherto suffered that we should make much fire, as we journeyed in the wilderness; for he said: I will make thy food become sweet, that ye cook it not” (1 Nephi 17:12).
Finally, we are told that they spent eight years in the wilderness. This was a journey that should take months, not years. S. Kent Brown has examined the contexts in which the word sojourn is used in the Bible, and suggests that it may mean a time in captivity. If they had met unfriendly tribes, they might have purchased their freedom through scribal services, as not all communities would have had someone who could read and write.