Well,
I respect that you voice your opinion and that is always helpful, personally i find different views help to keep me open-minded. But i disagree with what you have said.
I would say I practice bushcraft. Most of this practice takes place about 20 metres from where I type theses very words, a small wooded area that separates the garden of my house from a golf course. It is not the vast forests of Canada nor the open plains of Australia but it's a nice wee spot where i can sit and have a fire and do some bushy activities, like whittling. I enjoy It. I often go out with my knife, a small axe, bahco laplander and my crusader cup. I find this equipment helps me to learn about and enjoy the resources that nature provides ,or the 'mud, leaves, sticks, stones' as you put it. To me, the resource and knowledge of it is more important as the equipment that you carry with you. The resource gives the material and the equipment allows you to process it into something that will help you to live more comfortably. From doing this, I begin to learn, respect, nurture and grow closer to nature.
We once lived from and with nature, you might even say we were nature, when we were hunting for food with a bow, when a home was the space around the fire. Many years gave passed since then and that way of life is forgotten, modern society does not support it. But I believe we can still become closer to nature, start to see the forest as our ancestors did and try to respect it as they did, through bushcraft. Using the resources around us and less equipment is one of its principles of course, but i think that the more unnecessary bushcraft equipment that is available to us gives us somewhere to start and develop from. For example; you may start off lighting fires using a bic lighter to ignite your tinder, so that you can learn how to configure a fire properly. Once you have mastered that skill you may move onto lighting fires using a ferro rod, so now you can start to learn more about types of tinder etc. after that you may move onto using flint and steel fire lighting, perhaps the most reliable but hardest to master. Obviously some tools will always be used like a knife or axe but as we develop our knowledge and learn about the resources available to us, the less equipment we will need.
I hope some of this makes sense,
outdoorpaddy