You’re right that being close to amenities is good, but you’re building up a false dichotomy between 1-2 hours from the office[0] and “move to the mountains”. You’re ignoring option C “move close to a smaller city”. Often 1-2 hours from the kinds of cities where major offices are located provide an inferior quality of life compared to a smaller city.
1-2 hours away from my old office is basically Burbank, which is still quite expensive and crowded. There are tons of small cities that provide better quality of life than Burbank for cheaper, including the small one I picked (Boise). Also, I can get to nature much easier from where I live.
0 - I’m assuming from context that the “major city” you reference is the one where the office is located.
I think a problem with the Boise-sized metro is that it's super hit-or-miss. Places like Boise or Salt Lake City are awesome, but I think those are kind of the outliers. Many smaller, isolated cities struggle with being desirable places to live. Small cities in places like upstate New York, the Deep South, far Northern California, or Eastern Washington are tough to get young people to move to so they often have problems of urban decay.
1-2 hours away from my old office is basically Burbank, which is still quite expensive and crowded. There are tons of small cities that provide better quality of life than Burbank for cheaper, including the small one I picked (Boise). Also, I can get to nature much easier from where I live.
0 - I’m assuming from context that the “major city” you reference is the one where the office is located.