cant find. i never told him to stay anywhere either. at some point i realized he isnt following me anymore. now no one else will follow me. plus it was faerndal (spelling?) so cant cheat with training archery anymore..

use google earth maps

More then one follower. At least twenty. Someone from the Companions guild can train up to 75. Losing them is not a big deal but it is if they are currently carring a lot of stuff.

uhhh faerndal is a little on the paranoid side. im pretty sure he has his gps on his iphone set to off.

If you told him to wait, after a few days they return to where you got them (at least that works with the dog). He might have just gone home anyways.

for sure. its just that no one else will follow me now. does that time out at somepoint or should i just get used to being alone.

Since you didn't tell him to wait, unless he's dead he'll eventually either catch up with you, or get tired of looking for you and go home (where you hired him). If you can't find him, try fast travelling.

Erik is always getting separated from me. Sometimes I climb or jump someplace where he won't follow me, and sometimes he goes off by himself to fight something he caught sight of. I finally realized he'd find me sooner or later or else go home, so I don't wait for him anymore. I once lost him for several game days. I went to the tavern where I'd hired him and he wasn't there, so I figured he was dead. A few minutes later, after taking care of some other business in town, I went back into the tavern and there he was.

lmao nice charachter name wood elf perhaps?

the follower's folow rtines are less than i've expected of them. they get lost alot. if my character is able tu jump over rocks so should they, but instead they search for the clear path.
in this regard some followers are "dumber" that others. i've found so far that the sorceress of azura is the greatest of them. can handle some rough terain pretty well, and navigates rather well.
- the dumbest was the (now dead) "asistant" received from Dragonsreach.
- sven slips between them

he'll rejoin you some time, if you fast travel or enter some houses (sometimes not imediately, so just wait, until you'll hear from him again)
in other cases when they are wounded badly that they "surreder", and you leave them in that area it's posible for them to get stuck to recover their health.
in all the cases go on ahead, without them. if they die, you'll get other followers.

You could always load a saved game where that NPC is and use the console command to click on it and get the idnumber. Then go back to your game where he/she is lost and console player.moveto npc id number.