Your post addresses many of the reasons I moved from Seattle to rural KY. And the intangibles are really everything. As I’ve said for decades, if I were a Gazelle, I’d choose the freedom and danger of the Serengeti to three squares a day in a zoo.
Our modern world is, in many ways, the latter.
I went the other direction, left the sticks for piped natural gas, and good running water.
I now live on the edge of a city with open lands minutes away, kind of split the difference.