Quote 7
"It's no use talking about it," Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. "I'm not going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again – back into the old room – and there'd be an end of all my adventures!"
So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill. (Looking-Glass 2.3-4)
Alice seems to have a sense that her time in the fantastic Looking-Glass World will be limited, and she's determined to explore as much as she can before she has to go home. This sense of limited time seems to imply that she won't always be able to imagine her way back there – this is a special, one-time-only adventure.
Quote 8
Of course the first thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she was going to travel through. "It's something very like learning geography," thought Alice, as she stood on tiptoe in hopes of being able to see a little further. "Principal rivers – there are none. Principal mountains – I'm on the only one, but I don't think it's got any name. Principal towns – why, what are those creatures, making honey down there? They can't be bees – nobody ever saw bees a mile off, you know – " and for some time she stood silent, watching one of them that was bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into them, "just as if it was a regular bee," thought Alice. (Looking-Glass 3.1)
Once again, Alice's instinct to be businesslike and organized about the process of exploration is thwarted by the strangeness of the fantasy world. Like a good Victorian explorer, she begins to make a "grand survey" of the land around her, but she's quickly distracted by how strange the insects are.
Quote 9
She very soon came to an open field, with a wood on the other side of it: it looked much darker than the last wood, and Alice felt a little timid about going into it. However, on second thoughts, she made up her mind to go on: "for I certainly won't go back," she thought to herself, and this was the only way to the Eighth Square. (Looking-Glass 3.63)
The refusal to turn around gives Alice the courage to explore places that seem dark and threatening.