Yeah, that's exactly the distinction. It's less a problem with how it's presented and more that the rest of the game has trained you to expect permanent progression systems to eventually be completable. Having the wilderness suddenly be the exception makes it feel inconsistent even if I explain the diminishing chance better.
That's a big part of why I'm looking at changing the system itself rather than just clarifying the text. I'm in the middle of a fairly large content update and some bug fixing right now, so the revamped wilderness system will most likely come with that update as well.